And Back Again
by Don Sample
Summary: Faith finds herself in a new world, with Hobbits and Goblins and Wargs. Oh my! Crossover with 'The Hobbit' by J.R.R. Tolkien
1. Part I, I'm Not in Kansas Anymore

_**And Back Again**_

_Bilbo had many hardships and adventures before he got  
back. The Wild was still the Wild, and there were many other  
things in it in those days besides goblins; but he was well  
guarded—the wizard was with him, and Beorn for much of the  
way—and he was never in great danger again."_

— _The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien  
Chapter XVIII: The Return Journey_

Well, except for this one time…

**Part I: I'm Not in Kansas Anymore**

'Oh…that's not good,' thought Faith, as the vortex started to grow around where she had stabbed her sword into the demon with the unpronounceable name. An electric shock travelled up the blade, making her hands clench tighter around the hilt; she couldn't let go of it, even if she wanted to. She tried to pull her sword free, but she didn't have enough traction on the slime and slush covered ground. She felt herself being pulled inexorably toward the swirling light. It expanded, and engulfed her. She was surrounded by light and howling wind. Bolts of lighting flashed around her, causing her body to jerk and convulse. And then she was falling. She barely had time to twist herself around and get her feet under her before she hit the ground. She tried roll with the impact, to avoid breaking any bones, and she mostly succeeded. The half foot or so of wet snow on the ground helped as well.

Faith winced a bit from a pain in her ankle as she climbed slowly to her feet, brushing snow off her jacket and pants, and out of her hair. She'd experienced enough Boston winters to know that the stuff got a lot colder if you let it melt on you, and get your clothes all wet. She looked around, to try to get her bearings.

"I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore, Toto," she said to herself…not that she'd been in Kansas to begin with. She had been hunting the unpronounceable demon through an industrial district in Cleveland. Now there was no sign of any industry in any direction she looked.

She was standing on top of a low hill. In one direction the land rose in waves of higher and higher hills, with snow covered mountains in the distance. In the other was an expanse of plain, stretching for a few miles until it ended at the edge of a forest, whose trees seemed to be bare of leaves. The sky was overcast grey; she couldn't see any sign of the sun. Her watch said that it was three AM, but that clearly wasn't the time here, wherever here was. She had no idea if it was morning, or afternoon.

There wasn't any sign of human habitation, no matter what direction she looked. No telephone poles, no fences, no wisps of smoke, no distant sound of traffic on a highway. The only sound she could hear was the wind, blowing around her.

"Well, I can't stay here." She was too exposed on this hilltop. Her leather motorcycle jacket gave her good protection from the wind, but it was still chilly. She sheathed her sword, and started off down the hill toward the forest, limping a bit from the ankle that she'd twisted when she landed. The forest would give her some protection from the wind, and she could find wood there to make herself a fire. She checked her pockets to make sure that she still had her lighter. "Ha! Take that!" she said to all the people who had complained about her smoking, and told her that cigarettes would kill her one day. She fished her pack out of another pocket. It had been crushed when she landed, but it still had a dozen smokes in it. She pulled one out, and lit up.

She took an inventory of her other pockets while she walked. Her cell phone had survived the fall intact, but it wasn't receiving any signal. She had a Power Bar that she'd brought along for a late night snack, that she decided to save until later; a wallet with about $75 in cash, credit cards, driver's licence, and other useless things for the situation in which she had found herself; about another dollar's worth of loose change in her pocket along with her keys. The small penlight on the key ring might come in handy.

For weapons she had her sword, a couple of stakes, and a knife. She was really sorry that she had decided to leave her crossbow behind. It would have been useful if she had to hunt for food. So far she hadn't seen any sign of anything huntable, other than black specks that probably were birds, flying over the forest.

The forest was farther away than it had looked from the top of the hill, and it wasn't easy to wade through the snow. It had gotten deeper when she had reached lower ground. She had been walking for an hour and the trees didn't look a whole lot closer. And then she came to the stream. The water looked black, and cold. It was too wide for her to jump across here, and she didn't want to try wading through the icy water. She started to follow it, going with the flow, figuring that if she was going to find anyone, they'd be near the water.

It took her half an hour to find a place she could cross without getting her pants soaked. A couple of rocks in the stream gave her stepping stones that she could jump between to get across. The stream had wound its way closer to the forest here: it was only a hundred yards to the nearest trees. Faith decided that it was time to start to look for a place where she could camp for the night. She still hadn't caught sight of the sun, but there was a change in the light that told her that darkness was approaching. The daylight was definitely starting to fade by the time she had found a place where she could make a shelter.

She was glad she had her sword with her. It wasn't the best tool for the job, but it was better than nothing. She used it to hack up the branches of a fallen tree to get wood for a fire, and to make the frame for a lean-to. She stripped the boughs from a cedar tree to cover her lean-to, and make a bed.

* * *

Faith had been cold and hungry before, but that was the worst night that she could remember. She lay huddled on her bed, catching little more than brief naps. She had to get up often to stoke her fire, to keep it from going out.

The clouds cleared away near midnight, and the stars came into view. Faith wasn't that familiar with the constellations, but it seemed that she'd spent half her life outside at night, so she knew the major ones. Being able to find the Big Dipper and the North Star sometimes came in handy for getting her bearings at night. She moved away from her campsite, back out onto the plain so she could have a better look.

She had never seen so many stars in all her life. It was a moonless night, but the sky was full of light. She had seen the night sky from the desert and mountains before, but she had never seen anything like this. She tried to find the familiar constellations, but there was nothing. No Big or Little Dippers, no Orion, no Cassiopeia.

There was also no sign of light from distant cities. No matter how remote a place had seemed to her when she was out at night, she had usually been able to see some sort of glow on the horizon in one direction or another. Here there was nothing. Nothing in the sky gave her any clue about what direction she should travel if she hoped to find civilization. She was beginning to doubt if there was any civilization to be found, in whatever this place was.

It was six PM, by her watch, when the sky began to brighten. It had started to get dark about twelve hours earlier, so she figured that wherever she was, was about half a day out of synch with home. She supposed that she could be somewhere in Siberia, but she doubted it. Siberia would have the same stars as the ones she was used to seeing. She knew that different stars were visible in the night sky in the southern hemisphere, so maybe she was in Australia, but shouldn't it be summer there?

The rising sun told her which way was east. That put the mountains to the north of her, and the forest to the south. She had been moving westward while she was following the stream.

Dawn was greeted by the chittering of a squirrel in a tree. The little animal hadn't counted on how accurately, or how hard, a hungry Slayer could throw a rock. She knocked it off its branch, and reached the stunned animal on the ground before it could recover. A quick twist of its neck finished the job of killing it.

She used her knife to skin and gut the animal, and she impaled its carcass on a stick to roast over her fire. It wasn't the most appetizing of breakfasts, but by now she was getting too hungry to be fussy. She also didn't care what anyone said, squirrel did _not_ taste like chicken.

Her breakfast of squirrel also made her thirsty. She knew not to try eating snow: she was hovering close enough to hypothermia as it was. She went back to the stream, to drink from it. It was still icy-cold, but she didn't have to waste her body heat melting it first.

She didn't think that there was any point to staying where she was. There was nothing about the shelter that she had made for herself that she couldn't reproduce in an hour or two, and it didn't seem likely that anyone was going to find her here. It was best to get moving: maybe she'd be able to find someone living in this wilderness.

She took the time to carve herself a staff, to take some of the weight off her aching ankle. It had stiffened up overnight, but she expected it would loosen up, once she got moving. She doused her fire with snow, and set out.


	2. Part II, and Bears, Oh My!

**Part II: …and Bears, Oh My!**

Faith followed the stream westward. It continued to flow along the fringe of the forest, sometimes meandering away from it, sometimes taking her under its branches. She kept her eyes open for anything that might be edible as she moved, but it seemed that she had gotten lucky with that squirrel. She thought that she might have seen some signs of fish in the stream, but she didn't have anything to catch them with. She had read about tickling for trout, and figured that she'd give that a try if she hadn't found anything else before evening.

It was about noon when she came to the end of the stream. It flowed into a larger river, which in turn flowed southward, into the forest. Here at last she found some signs that she wasn't the only person living in this world. A series of stepping stones had been deliberately set into the stream, making it easy to cross without getting her feet wet, and she could see, just a little way upstream, a wooden bridge that crossed the river. It was old, and not in a very good state of repair, but it was the first sign that she'd seen of any sort of civilization. She hopped quickly from stone to stone across the stream, and ran to the bridge.

She could see that it was in even worse shape than she'd first thought when she got close to it. Half the planks of its deck seemed to be rotten, and a fair number of them were missing altogether. She would have been reluctant to cross it, but she could see clear signs that it had been recently used. The tracks of what looked like three horses, and some very large boot prints were clear in the snow approaching the bridge. The prints got more confused around the bridge. It looked like whoever had made them had spent some time debating whether to risk crossing the bridge themselves. Some more normal sized boot prints appeared in the snow, along with…Faith knelt down to take a closer look at what was clearly a small, bare, footprint. It was about the size of her hand, and she could see the impressions made by all five toes. What sort of people would make a kid go barefoot in the snow?

The more immediate question on her mind was how far ahead of her were they? She didn't think that they could have passed here any more than a day before, and probably less than that.

She set off at a run across the bridge, stepping in the bootprints of the larger man. Any board that could support someone with feet that big, would support her.

Faith jogged along, following the trail into the afternoon. She abandoned her staff. Her ankle was feeling fine now, and it was just dead weight while she was running. She figured that now was probably a good time to eat her Power Bar, to give her the energy she needed to keep this up. Whoever these travellers were, they seemed to be following some sort of old road, more of a track really. It led her away from the river, but continued to skirt along the northern edge of the forest.

The sun was sinking toward the western horizon. Faith was starting to think that she would have to give up the chase, and find some place to camp soon, but she kept running. Surely whoever she was following would need to make camp too. They had probably already stopped for the night. She was determined to keep moving, even through the night if she had to. She was a Slayer, she didn't need much sleep, and she'd be a lot warmer if she kept moving.

It was nearly full dark when she heard it: the sound of fighting up ahead. Her jog turned into a sprint as she ran up to the crest of a hill. She paused when she reached the top to take in the scene below her.

A pitched battle was taking place in the hollow below her. On one side were twenty or so demons of some sort. On the other side was…an old man, a bear, and a midget. The scene was so bizarre that Faith hesitated for a moment.

The old man was pretty spry. He was dressed in a grey cloak, and wore a tall pointed hat that wouldn't have looked out of place on the head of a Halloween witch. He had a long grey beard that swung with his movement. He was moving a lot, wielding a sword in one hand, and a staff in the other. The sword flashed with blue light as she watched him slice another one of the demons nearly in two with it. Half a dozen demon bodies already littered the ground.

The midget was armed with a short sword of his own. It seemed to flicker with the same blue light as the old man's sword. He wasn't nearly as effective a fighter as the old man, but he was good enough to keep the demons back.

The bear was something else again. Big, and black, its huge paws lashed out, scattering demons wherever they connected. Faith saw another half dozen demons die in the moments that she stood watching. At the rate things were going, this fight wouldn't last much longer. She wondered why the demons didn't just run, while they still had a chance.

More demons appeared out of the trees. These were armed with crude looking crossbows. They let a cloud of bolts fly toward the three in the centre of the fight. Their aim was not good though. They missed the midget and the old man completely. A couple of bolts found the flanks of the bear, making it roar in pain and anger. More bolts hit some of the demons.

Faith drew her sword and her knife, and charged toward the demons with the crossbows. She was among them before they could get reloaded. She let the Slayer come to the fore, whirling, thrusting, slashing, killing every demon within reach. Soon she noticed that she wasn't fighting alone. The bear was there with her, slashing, biting, tearing at them. The last demon went down under the bear's paw, and its jaws closed around the demon's head. A twist and a wrench pulled the demon's head off its body, and a toss of the bear's head sent it flying off into the darkness.

"Okay, that's just gross," said Faith, as she looked around. The ground was scattered with demon bodies. The old man and the midget were still on their feet. They, and the bear, were all looking at her now. The expressions on their faces were more curious, than hostile, but she wasn't so sure about the bear…maybe it was curious to see what she tasted like. She kept her eyes focused mainly on it, and held her sword ready, just in case. "Hey there, Gentle Ben, you just keep your distance. I got no quarrel with bears, especially when they do such a good job eliminating demons."

"Urrrngh!" said the bear. It turned away from Faith and lumbered over to a patch of clean snow. It took a mouthful, and then spit it out with a shake of its head. It repeated the process a few more times.

"Aw!" said Faith. "Washing the taste of demon out of your mouth! Good idea, I bet they taste worse than they look." She sniffed the air. "And smell."

After it had washed out its mouth, the bear rolled a few times in the snow, to clean the demon's blood from its fur. When it was done it turned back toward her. It rose up onto its hind legs, towering over her.

Faith took a couple of quick steps back, ready to defend herself if she had to, but the bear didn't attack: it shifted. Flesh flowed beneath its skin, bones changed size, some lengthening, others getting shorter. Its snout drew back into its face, and its head grew. When the changes stopped, a huge bear of a man was standing in front of her. What had been the bear's fur had transformed into what looked like a woollen tunic, and leggings.

Faith lowered her sword into a less threatening position. "Oh. Neat trick. Must come in handy. I'm Faith, by the way. Pleased to meet you."

The bear-man looked puzzled. He said something to her in a language that she didn't recognize. His deep voice sounded friendly enough though.

"Sorry," said Faith. "I didn't understand a word of that."

Bear-guy frowned, and called to the others. The old man strode across the ground toward them and said something else to her, in another language, that sounded almost like singing.

Faith shook her head. "Sorry, I'm still getting nothing… Uh… habla Español?" She got nothing but a blank look. "Good, I don't really speak much Spanish either." She ripped what looked like a reasonably clean scrap of cloth away from one of the demon bodies, and used it to wipe the black ichor off her sword and knife before she sheathed them. "While we're at it, parlez-vous Français? Sprechen sie Deutsch?" She got nothing but a questioning look. "Well, I've just about exhausted my non-English vocabulary…at least of non-swear words."

The old man looked more puzzled. He tried speaking to her in what seemed to be more languages before he gave up, and turned to his companions. He spoke quickly with them, while pointing to the demon bodies on the ground. The bear-man said something, and then vanished into the darkness. The midget went over to where they had started to make camp, and started to pack things up. Faith figured that they probably wanted to move away from the stink. She didn't know why the bear-guy had vanished, or why the old man started to drag the demon bodies into one central pile, but she decided to make herself useful, and helped him.

Bear-guy came back, leading three small horses, or big ponies. They must have bolted when the demons had attacked. He took them over to where the midget was breaking camp. He picked up an axe, and vanished again, this time into the forest

When Bear-guy came back again, he was dragging a dead tree. He went to work with his axe, chopping it down into more manageable sized pieces of wood, that he stacked near their pile of demons. Faith finally understood what was going on when he set the wood on fire. He and the old man waited until it was burning well before they tossed the first demon body into the flames.

It took a while to burn them all, including a few trips into the woods by Faith and Bear-guy to get more firewood. He seemed to be quite impressed by her strength. The midget had their gear all loaded up onto the ponies by the time the last demon body went onto the pyre.

Faith had taken some time to examine the demon's weapons, to see if there was anything worth taking. Their crossbows weren't much. They were so weak that she figured she could probably throw one of their bolts harder than one of those crossbows could shoot it. Their swords and knives were even worse: low quality steel that alternated between too soft, or too brittle. They had nothing that could hold an edge. It looked like the demons hadn't even bothered trying. Their swords were closer to being metal clubs, than blades. Rusting metal clubs at that.

The old man, and the midget mounted two of the ponies, and Bear-guy took hold of the halter on the third. The old man looked down at Faith, and with some gestures, he seemed to indicate that she was welcome to come along with them, while saying words that sounded friendly.

"Sure, I'll join you. My name is Faith, by the way." She put her hand to her chest. "Faith."

The old man pointed to her. "Faith?"

She nodded. "That's right."

He smiled, and put his hand to his own chest. "Gandalf."

Faith pointed to him. "Gandalf."

His smile grew. He pointed to his companions, first the midget, and then Bear-guy. "Bilbo Baggins, Beorn."

She repeated the names, nodding to each in turn. Bilbo Baggins said something that might have meant "Pleased to meet you" and she repeated it back to him. He nodded encouragement, and repeated the phrase more slowly, emphasizing the pronunciation of some of the words. She said it again. It took a couple more tries before Bilbo was happy with her pronunciation. She hoped that she was right about what it meant. For all she knew, she had just agreed to screw him.

They set out along the road, with Faith walking beside Bilbo's pony. He seemed to be happy to talk to her, even though she didn't have a clue what he was saying. This certainly was a queer group of people that she had fallen in with, using the broadest sense of the word "people." She took a quick look at his bare foot in the stirrup beside her. It was covered with soft looking fur, so she figured that maybe his feet weren't as cold as she thought they might be. His clothes were worn, and travel stained, but they reminded her of what a Proper English Gentleman on a camping trip might have worn…after the camping trip had been extended for several months.

They didn't go far. Just as far as the next valley, far enough to get away from the stink from the burning demons. Faith could still see the smudge of smoke, blotting out the stars in the sky behind them when Beorn signalled for them to stop.

It had been more than 24 hours since Faith's last real meal: she didn't count the squirrel, or the Power Bar. They seemed to be happy to share their food with her. Dinner consisted of some sort of bread, with honey, along with a mixture of dried fruits, and nuts that reminded Faith of trail-mix. She ate the portion offered her with gusto. Bilbo offered her more, but she decided not to test their hospitality, and politely declined—at least she hoped she was polite, she'd heard that in some cultures turning down an offer of food was rude. No one seemed to be offended. They even had some extra blankets on their pack pony from which they assembled a bedroll for her. She, along with Bilbo and Gandalf settled down for the night. It seemed that Beorn had drawn the first watch.


	3. Part III: Pondering in the Dark

**Part III: Pondering in the Dark**

Gandalf was awakened at midnight by Beorn, to take his turn at watch. The Goblins had been shattered at the Battle of the Five Armies, but there were still bands of them roaming the Wild, trying to make their way back to their caves in the Misty Mountains, and waylaying any unwary travellers. The band that had attacked them that evening must have been pretty desperate, to attack himself and Beorn, but desperate enemies were often the most dangerous. They might have gotten lucky, and seriously wounded or killed Bilbo, or they might have managed to make off with some of their ponies, if not for the intervention of that strange woman.

Gandalf didn't know what to make of Faith. If anyone had asked him before tonight, he would have said that he was familiar with all of the languages spoken in Middle Earth, and fluent in most of them. He also thought that he knew all of races who populated this land. Faith, if that was indeed her name, and not the name of her race, or her word for "woman" or something like that, didn't fit with anything that he knew.

Her clothing was strange as well. Her jacket seemed to be made of cow leather, dyed charcoal black, but its method of closure was like nothing he had ever seen before. It seemed to be held together by hundreds of interlocking metal teeth. It seemed impossible for such an arrangement to be assembled or disassembled, but a simple tab, pulled up or down fastened, or released the teeth in an instant. He would dearly like to have a closer look at it. There was an elegant simplicity to it that resembled Elvish work, but no Elf had ever made anything like that. Her trousers were baggy, with many pockets, and made of high quality cloth. The stitching of the seams was more precise than any he had ever seen before.

He pulled his pipe from his pocket, and filled it with tobacco. He used a small stick, ignited by their fire, to light it. A good smoke always helped him think. He moved a little way off from the fire, and sat on a fallen log with his back to it, so his night vision wouldn't be impeded by its light. He sat, and he smoked, and he watched the woods while he pondered.

How could she have gotten here? She clearly had no pack, no food, no supplies of any sort. Had she been travelling with a larger group, and become separated from them? That seemed unlikely. No such group could have been travelling through this land without word of it reaching Beorn. Had she been travelling alone, and been attacked herself, and lost most of her possessions? That seemed a more likely explanation, but why would a woman be travelling through the Wild alone?

Then there was her ability as a fighter. Women warriors were rare, but not unheard of—the women of Rohan for example might not ride with their soldiers into battle, but they were trained in the use of the sword, and other weapons, so that they could defend their homes while the men were away—but in all the years that he had wandered Middle Earth, he had rarely seen anyone with the skill, or ferocity she had shown. Some of the great elf warriors might be able to match her, but he had some doubts about that.

He heard movement behind him. He knew it was her, moving in her bed. He looked back, and saw her sitting up, lacing her boots. She put on her jacket, and there was ripping sound as she closed that marvellous fastener on the front of it. She hugged her arms around herself and shivered a bit, rubbing her hands quickly across her sleeves, until her jacket warmed up a bit. While her jacket looked warm enough, what she wore under it did not. Her shirt was made of a light weight fabric, perhaps cotton, suitable for a much warmer climate. Mist formed from her exhaled breath as she looked around, until she saw him watching her. The snow barely crunched beneath her boots as she moved toward him. She came around the log and gestured toward a spot beside him. He nodded, and shifted over a bit to make more room for her. She said something softly in her language, and sat down beside him. Her hands went into pockets in the side of her jacket and she pulled a crumpled looking box from one, and an unfamiliar device from the other. She shook a small white cylinder from the box, and placed an end of it into her mouth. A flick of her thumb on the device in her other hand produced a small flame. She touched it to the end of the cylinder, and sucked air through it. The end of the cylinder glowed brightly. She took it from her mouth, and blew out a cloud of smoke. Gandalf caught the familiar smell of tobacco, harsher than Longbottom Leaf that he preferred, but tobacco none the less.

They sat together, side by side, smoking. Gandalf noticed that she had brought her sword with her, something else that marked her as a warrior. She was never far from her weapon. He wanted to have a closer look at it, but he wasn't sure how she would react.

He started by detaching Glamdring's scabbard from his belt, and leaning it against the log between them, where she could reach it as easily as he. She seemed surprised by his action, until he pointed to her own scabbard. "May I see your sword?"

She looked at him for a moment, as if trying to see into his soul, to see if there was any malice there. What she saw seemed to satisfy her. She slowly drew her sword, and presented its hilt to him. He took it from her.

She snubbed out her tobacco cylinder against the log, and after a moment of thought, returned it to the box from which it had come. She pointed to Glamdring, and mimicked his question back to him. "Mayi seeur sword?"

"Yes." Gandalf lifted Glamdring by its scabbard and presented it to her. She slowly drew the blade.

Gandalf turned his attention to her sword. The quality of the steel was excellent, not up to Elvish standards, but better than had been made by men since the fall of Númenor. The blade was heavier than he would have expected for a sword carried by someone of Faith's stature, but he had already seen that she was much stronger than she looked. He felt for any magic that it might contain, and found none. He examined the blade closely, looking for any runes that might have been inscribed on it. Up near the hilt were some unfamiliar letters stamped into the metal, that he assumed were some sort of maker's mark.

Faith had stood up, and moved a few paces away. She gave Glamdring a few slow practice swings, getting the feel of its weight and balance. She slowly sped up, moving into a pattern of intricate moves, as if shadow fencing with an invisible opponent. It had been many years since Gandalf had seen a fencer with such skill as this girl was exhibiting.

She was barely breathing hard when she stopped. He could see her smiling in the reddish light cast by the fire, he thought that he skin might have been flushed with excitement, but it was hard to judge, in the firelight. She came back, and presented Glamdring's hilt to him. He took it, while returning her sword to her. They both sheathed their weapons.

"You should try to get more sleep," he told her. She just looked puzzled, so he pointed back to her bedroll, and mimed going to sleep, holding his hands up by his head, laying his cheek against them, and closing his eyes for a moment. She said something incomprehensible, and shook her head. She sat back down on the log, got her tobacco cylinder out of its crumpled box, and lit it up again.

After a few seconds of silence, she pointed to his sword, and asked him a question. He thought it might mean "What is that?" so he answered "Sword."

His guess seemed to be correct, for she pointed first to her own sword, and then Glamdring, saying "sword" each time. She repeated the question, pointing to a tree.

"Tree," said Gandalf, and then he pointed to the cylinder in her mouth. "What is that?"

Faith was surprised at first, but she seemed to catch on quickly. "Cigarette," she said, and then pulled her knife out of its sheath on her belt. "What is that?"

They spent the next few minutes with her pointing to things and asking "What is that?" and him telling her. She seemed to have a good memory. Every once in a while, she would go back over everything he had taught her, pointing to them, and saying their names. She rarely made a mistake.

When there was nothing but a stump left of her cigarette, Faith stubbed the ember at its tip out, and then seemed to consider what to do with it. After a moment she got up and went over to toss it into the coals of their fire. Gandalf added some more wood to the fire, before going back to her language lesson.


	4. Part IV: You're Not From Around Here

**Part IV: You're Not From Around Here, Are You?**

After they had exhausted all the things around them for Faith to point at, they moved on to verbs. Faith would mime an action, and Gandalf would give her the word for it. By the time the sky started to brighten Faith had learned maybe a hundred words. Not enough to carry on a conversation, but good enough for some basic communication…about at the level of one of the old text computer games that Andrew liked to play when he was feeling retro: "Go north," "take stone," "kill demon" sort of thing. The demons that they had fought seemed to be called 'orcs' but Faith wasn't sure if that was a generic name for demons, or the name for that particular breed.

Gandalf put an end to the language lesson by indicating that he was going back to bed. "_You sleep,_" he said to Faith, pointing back to her own bedroll.

"_No sleep,_" said Faith, shaking her head.

Gandalf looked dubious, but he didn't argue the point. Faith figured that that was largely because she didn't have the vocabulary to understand any argument he might make. He shook his head in resignation, and went to wake Bilbo.

Faith could only understand a few words from the conversation that they had. Not enough to even get the gist of what they were saying to each other. She didn't know if Gandalf was telling Bilbo what a great girl she was, or if he was warning him to keep a careful watch to make sure that she didn't try to slit his and Beorn's throats while they were sleeping. She didn't think it could have been the later, because Bilbo smiled quite happily at her, after Gandalf had lain back down in his bedroll to get some more sleep.

It looked like Gandalf had told him about their language lessons, because Bilbo picked up right where Gandalf had left off teaching her things.

Bilbo started to prepare breakfast when the sky got bright enough that he could see what he was doing. Faith tried to make herself useful, fetching water from a nearby creek and other things, while Bilbo taught her a bunch of words having to do with food, and its preparation.

The sun peeking over the horizon, combined with the scent the cooking breakfast awoke Gandalf and Beorn. They all ate a breakfast of pancakes, with butter and honey, washed down by a hot tea-like drink, also sweetened with honey, before they broke camp.

Once again, Faith found herself walking along beside Bilbo. Among other things, she didn't have to look up so much to look at him. Seated on his pony, the smallest of the three, his head wasn't much higher above the ground than hers. As the morning unfolded, he slowly told her the story of the journey that he was on. She gathered that he had left his home, somewhere far to the west, travelling with several companions. They'd had many adventures, facing orcs and other things, that had culminated with a great battle some distance to the east of here. And now Bilbo was on his way back home. There was a lot more to the story than that, that Faith couldn't begin to comprehend. She'd had to keep interrupting Bilbo, to ask him to repeat things using simpler words, and explaining what they meant to even get as much of the story as she had.

They crested a hill in the late afternoon, and Faith could see out over a broad valley, with a range of mountains visible far to the west, that dwarfed the mountains to their north. "_The Misty Mountains,_" said Bilbo as he pointed to them. Faith guessed that they were still many days' journey away, if that was even where they were going. She had learned that there immediate destination was Beorn's home, but she had little idea where that was. She had gathered from Bilbo's story that it was somewhere between the mountains, and the forest, which meant that it might be close, but she had the impression that they expected to be travelling for many more days yet.

They stopped to make camp while there was still a couple of hours of daylight left. After another meal of bread, honey, trail-mix, etc. Bilbo removed a large book from one of his saddle bags, along with a pen and a bottle of ink, and started to write in it.

After he had filled a page, Bilbo called for Faith to come over to him. He flipped back to the beginning of the book, and showed her a page with a map drawn on it. He started pointing out places on it, that she recognized from the story he had told her. He pointed out the Misty Mountains, that she had seen that afternoon, and Mirkwood, the enormous forest whose northern boundary they were skirting. A river was shown flowing southward between the mountains and the forest. Bilbo pointed to a place between the river and the forest. "_This is Beorn's home, where we are going._" What Faith actually understood of of what he said was more like "Beorn home, we go," but that was good enough to understand what he meant.

"_Where we?_" asked Faith.

Bilbo pointed to a place near the north-western corner of Mirkwood. "_We are here._"

Faith examined the map for a moment, and pointed to a spot about half way between their current location, and a small river that was shown flowing into the forest. "_We fight orcs._"

Bilbo nodded enthusiastically. "_That's right._"

Faith gauged the distance that they had travelled from the river bridge in two days, compared to the distance remaining to Beorn's home, and figured that they still had a couple of weeks' journey ahead of them, assuming that the map was drawn to an accurate scale, and the terrain would be as easy to cross as what she had experienced so far, and the weather remained fair. Something like a heavy snowfall could quickly change that though.

Gandalf had been watching her and Bilbo with the map. He came over to them. "_Where are you from?_" he asked, waving his hand around the map.

Faith shook her head. "_No on…_" She paused, not knowing the word for 'map.' She pointed to it. "_What is this?_"

"_This is a map,_" said Gandalf.

"_No on map,_" said Faith.

Gandalf seemed to accept that readily enough. After a quick conversation with Bilbo, too quick for Faith to follow any of it, he took Bilbo's book and pen, turned to a fresh page, and started to draw. Faith realized that he was drawing a new map, showing a much wider area. Faith recognized the main features from Bilbo's map taking up a small area in the north of it. Here was the final proof that she wasn't on Earth anymore—maybe thrown back into the distant past, or something—not that Faith had really needed any: the continent that Gandalf had drawn didn't look like any of the ones that she knew. Gandalf turned the book to her when he was done. "_Is your home on this map?_"

Faith shook her head. "_No on map,_" Damn! How did you explain to someone you were from a different world, probably a completely different dimension? Something like that would be hard enough to explain, even if anyone here spoke English. With the sort of vocabulary she had learned so far, it was impossible.

She turned the pages back to Bilbo's map, and pointed to a spot about a day's journey to the east of the river bridge. "_Fall sky here._"

She looked at Gandalf, expecting to see outright disbelief on his face. She didn't see it. There was what she took for a healthy level of skepticism, but he didn't seem to be rejecting what she said completely. He turned back to his own map. "_Are you from Valinor?_" he asked, pointing off to the west of what he had drawn.

"Never heard of it," said Faith, which of course, no one understood. She tried again. "_No on map._" She swept her hands all around the boundaries of it, and shook her head. "_No map._"

Gandalf was clearly puzzled, but he too seemed to see the futility of trying to get any explanation from her using the limited vocabulary that they had to work with. He closed up the book, and told Bilbo that it was time to start preparing dinner.

Faith had started the day thinking that Bilbo was some sort of servant for Gandalf or Beorn—he did seem to be the one who took care of most of the cooking and cleaning and such—but she had quickly disabused herself of that notion as he had told her his story. She wasn't entirely sure what he was to the others, but it was clear that he wasn't their servant. He took care of the cooking because he liked to cook, and he wasn't shy about giving out orders to the others to fetch water, or firewood or any of the other things he needed in the course of making dinner.

Gandalf and Beorn followed Bilbo's directions with a good cheer that made it clear that they weren't his servants, either. They were three companions, sharing a common journey, each doing his own part along the way.

Beorn seemed to be their guide. He had transformed into his bear form at several times during the day, and gone loping off to scout the road ahead of them. Gandalf seemed to share in the guide duties, and Faith had seen last night that they also shared the night watch duties. She had also seen that they were both formidable fighters, and if there were other things like those orcs roaming around this world, that was something that any travelling party would need.

She had also learned that Bilbo called himself a "Hobbit," and that he was from a place called Hobbiton, in the Shire, both of which he had pointed out to her on his map. Gandalf was an "Istar," which she gathered meant something more than "old man." There was nothing old the way he moved, and at times she had felt that there was some great power within him. There was something about Bilbo too. Not necessarily a power of his own: maybe it was something that he carried. It made her nervous, but short of giving him a thorough frisking, she couldn't think of any way to find out what it was. She didn't think it could be anything very important, though.


	5. Part V: The Joys of Plumbing

**Part V: The Joys of Plumbing**

Faith didn't go to sleep when Gandalf and Bilbo did that night. She stayed up with Beorn when he took the first watch. He wasn't much for talking with her, lacking Gandalf's patience and Bilbo's enthusiasm. He tended to be very gruff, and spoke in short sentences, without Gandalf's thoughtfulness, or Bilbo's sometimes over-flowery language. When Beorn had something to say, he came right to the point and said it, without any concern for phrasing things in a way that might not offend (as Gandalf often did) or were in any way poetic (as Bilbo sometimes tended to do.) Much of the time that they shared together was spent in silence.

She did go to bed at about ten o'clock, by her watch, to catch a few hours sleep. She was awakened much later by the sound of Gandalf adding more wood to the fire. She got out of her bed to join him for the rest of the night, continuing her language lessons. She wished for a moment that she had Dawn along. Buffy's brat of a sister might be annoying at times, but she was good with the language thing.

Gandalf noticed her checking the time on her watch, and asked to see it. He seemed to grasp that it was a timepiece fairly quickly. He was fascinated by the device, watching the regular changing of the numbers as it counted the seconds away. That led to spending a little time with Faith teaching him the symbols for the numbers on her watch, and to Gandalf teaching her more about numbers and counting than what she had picked up from Bilbo that day.

Gandalf was intrigued by all her modern gadgets. He very quickly learned how her lighter worked, and seemed to understand the underlying principles of its operation, even if he had never seen anything quite like it before. He was delighted by the penlight on her key-ring. Faith wasn't sure if she adequately explained what the cell phone was to him. She had felt a little trepidation about showing him how it was also a camera—being able to show a Watcher a picture of a demon was so much simpler than trying to describe it too him, so all the Slayers carried around camera phones now. Gandalf was startled by the flash when it went off, and amazed to see the picture of himself on the small LCD display, but he didn't seem to be disturbed by it. In some ways his delight at all the things she showed him reminded her of Giles, when presented with a new book, written in a language that he was unfamiliar with.

The pattern was set for the following days. Faith would usually walk along beside Bilbo while they travelled, listening to his stories. He had stopped talking about his own adventures, and started to tell other stories: the quest for the Silmarils, wonderful jewels created by Fëanor and stolen by Melkor; the tale of Lúthien and Beren; the fall of Númenor. She wondered if the stories he was telling her were part of the history of this world, or just stories.

The weather warmed slightly, melting the snow that was on the ground, and turning the road they were following to mud for a time, but it quickly dried in the bright and sunny days. The temperature still dropped well below freezing at night. Gandalf and Beorn seemed both cheered, and worried by the warmer weather. It did make the travelling easier, but they were concerned that it might come to a sudden end.

By night, Faith would stay up for the start of the first watch with Beorn. Sometimes he would transform into his bear shape, and move off into the darkness, doing a patrol around the perimeter of their camp. She used the moments of privacy that gave her, enhanced by a blanket strung up on a line stretched between tree branches, to take care of things like bathing, using water from a pot heated over the fire, and some soap that Bilbo had provided for her. She used the same water to wash her socks, and underwear, and left them to hang by the fire until morning to dry. That tended to give her a slightly smoky odour during the day, but it was much better than the alternative. In a couple of weeks she'd have another problem, and she didn't think her language skills would be up to asking about "feminine hygiene products" before then. She supposed that she would have to "go on the rag" to use Spike's phrase. Faith was even less pleased with the toilet arrangements, than she was with the bathing. More than once, while she squatted behind some bush, Faith swore to herself, that if—_when_—she got home, she would never take toilet paper for granted again.

After bathing and doing her laundry, Faith would catch a few hours of sleep before waking again to spend the early morning hours with Gandalf. No one asked her to take a watch herself, and she didn't ask. She was still a stranger to these people, and one with a strange story about having fallen out of the sky at that. She wouldn't have trusted anyone who told a story like that, why should she expect them to?

* * *

They had been travelling for a week before Faith saw any more sign that they were not the only people living in this world. Early one afternoon she sighted a narrow wisp of smoke rising above a grove of trees. When they got closer she saw that someone had built a fence surrounding a cultivated field. The harvest had taken place some time ago, and only the stubble remained from whatever crops had been grown there.

Beorn led them to a gate in the fence. A path lead from it toward a house built from rough-hewn logs. The smoke that Faith had seen earlier rose from a stone chimney at the side of it. Gandalf and Bilbo dismounted their ponies as Beorn opened the gate. They led their mounts up the path to the house, with Faith bringing up the rear.

Beorn called out a greeting, and the door opened, just a crack at first, and she could see the eye of someone peering out to see who had come visiting. They only looked for a second, before the door was thrown wide open, and a woman came bustling out, clearly happy to see him. "Beorn!" she called, followed by some rapid jabbering that Faith couldn't follow. Two young children—a boy and girl—followed her, looking nervously at the strangers on their doorstep. Faith didn't think that the girl could have been more than eight years old, and her brother was younger.

Beorn introduced Gandalf, Bilbo, and Faith to the woman. Bilbo gave the woman a little bow, and repeated the phrase that he had first taught to Faith, so she did the same when her turn came, though she still wasn't entirely sure what it meant.

The woman, whose name was Marjukka, invited them all into the house. From Beorn's introduction Faith knew that she had never met Gandalf before, but she recognized his name, and she treated him with great respect. The boy and the girl were introduced as Jaska and Asla. The children seemed to be quite shy around Faith and Gandalf, though they apparently knew Beorn well enough. They were fascinated by Bilbo, who was barely taller than they were, and so Faith figured he was the least intimidating of the strangers.

The cabin was much nicer on the inside than Faith had expected it to be, based on what she could see from the outside. The main room was a combination kitchen/dining/sitting room, with a large stone fireplace, as well as what looked like a cast-iron cooking stove, and a sink with a hand pump for water. The floor was wood, polished smooth by many years of foot traffic. There were doorways leading to side rooms, and a ladder leading up to a loft in which she could see child sized beds.

Marjukka bustled around, doing a quick cleaning—though Faith couldn't see why: the place looked plenty clean to her, the way it was. Faith found herself a chair, and sat—mostly listening, and smiling and nodding when anyone addressed her—letting the others tell Marjukka where they had come from, and where they were going. Faith wasn't sure what they told Marjukka about her, but the children's eyes got big when they looked at her, with looks of wonder on their faces.

With the initial introductions out of the way, Beorn went back outside to tend to the ponies, and Marjukka sent the boy Jaska with him. After they had gone, she went to a door beside the fireplace, and waved for Faith to follow her. She took Faith into a room, one wall of which was made up by one of the stone sides of the fireplace itself. The most interesting thing about the room though, was what was beside that stone wall: a bathtub. Hallelujah! It was really more like the bottom half of a large barrel, but a bathtub it most certainly was.

There was a tap in the stone wall, and when Marjukka opened it, hot water started to spill out into the tub. Faith figured that there must have been some sort of warming tank built into the fireplace. There was also a hand pump, that Marjukka explained (not without some difficulty) would let her mix cold water with the hot from the fireplace, to get the bath the right temperature, and also, after turning a valve, allow her to refill the tank in the fireplace wall, so that there would be more hot water available for the next person to take a bath.

Marjukka left her, and Faith quickly stripped out of her clothes, and climbed into the tub. The warm water felt absolutely wonderful as it surrounded her. She just wanted to soak in it, bask in its sensuous warmth, let it soothe away the knots and aches in her muscles. "Oh, this is better than sex!" she told the room, safe in the knowledge that even if the people outside heard what she'd said, they wouldn't understand it.

The little girl, Asla, came into the room after Faith had been soaking for a few minutes. She was carrying a stack of towels, what looked like some sort of clothing made of a flannel-like material, and on top, a coarse metal comb. "_These are for you,_" she told Faith. She started to gather up Faith's discarded clothes. "_Mamma will wash your clothes._"

"_Thank you, Asla,_" said Faith. "And _thank_ your _mamma_ too." That last sentence was a mixture of English and whatever the local language was called, but Asla seemed to understand her about as well as Faith had understood Asla.

Once Asla had gone again, Faith got down to the proper business of bathing herself, washing all the nooks and crannies of her body that hadn't had a proper cleaning for over a week now. Once finished with her body, she got busy washing her hair, and using the comb Asla had brought to remove the tangles from it. The soap she had to use was something she wouldn't have even considered using on her hair, if she'd been at home—it was worse than the stuff they'd given her in jail—but after a week without washing her hair, she couldn't be choosy.

She used more of the hot water from the tank in the fireplace to rinse her hair after she had washed it, and then she had climbed from the tub and used one of the towels that Asla had brought to dry herself and her hair.

When she was finally finished, she shook out the folded flannel outfit that Asla had given her. She was somewhat chagrinned to discover that it looked rather like a "granny gown," though Faith was certain that _her_ grandmother never would have worn such a thing. She didn't really have much choice. It was either this, or skin, and she really didn't have much of a feel for how these people would react to that.

* * *

Marjukka's husband, Teuvo, came home while Bilbo was having his turn in the bath. He had evidently been out hunting, for he was carrying a brace of rabbits with him. Beorn didn't seem to be very happy about that, and there was a bit of an awkward moment between him and Teuvo, but nothing came of it. Faith had the impression that this was part of a long standing disagreement between the two of them. Marjukka took the rabbits and muttered something to Beorn and her husband that Faith could have sworn meant "Oh grow up!" She carried the rabbits over to what served as her kitchen counter and set about skinning and cleaning them.

Beorn introduced Teuvo to Gandalf and Faith, and again Faith saw that Gandalf's name was known to these people. He seemed to be a little puzzled by how Faith was dressed, until Marjukka pointed out Faith's clothes, hanging to dry by the fire.

Dinner that evening consisted of rabbit stew, fortified by bread and other things from the traveller's stores. Faith noticed that Marjukka had kept a portion of the vegetables that she had cooked separate from the rest when she was making the stew, and these went to Beorn. It seemed that he was a vegetarian, which struck her as very odd for a man who spent so much time as a bear. For herself, she was glad to have some meat back in her diet: the stew was excellent.

Everyone sat around the fire after their dinner, and Bilbo regaled them with a story from his adventures. Faith's grasp of the language was improving, so she was able to understand more of what he was saying now. The children listened with rapt attention, as he told them about how he has sneaked into Smaug's lair, and escaped with a golden cup. How the dragon had discovered the theft, and scorched the side of the mountain, trying to catch the thief. How Bilbo had discovered the chink in the dragon's armour, and the news of that chink had been delivered to Bard in the Dale so that he could slay the dragon, and so that Thorin could reclaim his throne under the mountain.

It was time for everyone to go to bed when Bilbo came to the end of his tale. Bilbo was given Asla's bed. Faith was too big for Jaska's bed, so Asla was moved to share her brother, while Faith got the floor between them. Marjukka had offered her own bed, and seemed quite upset that she couldn't offer better, but Faith assured her that the floor of the loft was a vast improvement over the ground that she had been sleeping on.

Gandalf also refused the offer of Marjukka and Teuvo's bed for himself. He and Beorn (who was too big for any of the beds) spread out their bedrolls on the floor of the main room. Soon, everyone was asleep.


	6. Part VI: No Yellow Brick Road

**Part VI: No Yellow Brick Road**

Faith lay in her bedroll, enjoying the feeling of not having to get up. She was snuggled in amongst her blankets, a cocoon of warmth protected from the cold air. This was the first time since she had arrived in this world that she had slept through the night, and now she was enjoying a bit of a lazy morning lie-in. It was only hampered by the lack of a nice soft mattress.

There was a small, eastern facing window in the loft, and Faith could see the deep blue of the sky, with red tinted clouds drifting in it. She could also hear the sounds of movement coming from downstairs, and decided that it was time to get up.

Bilbo and the children were still asleep in their beds when Faith sat up. She looked down from the loft and saw that Marjukka was awake, and moving quietly around in her kitchen. Faith heard the sizzle of bacon hitting a hot frying pan. That sound roused Bilbo from his slumber.

Gandalf was awake. He asked Marjukka if she needed any assistance, and she chased him away, shaking a wooden spoon at him. It seemed that no one was allowed to cook in her kitchen, except for her. Gandalf backed off, and went to sit at the table to wait for her to finish.

Faith could see no sign of Beorn, so she figured he was somewhere outside, maybe prowling around the small farmstead in bear form.

She was still wearing the granny gown that Marjukka had given her, and the rungs of the ladder felt cold against her bare feet as she climbed down from the loft. The ground floor felt even colder. She went over to where her clothes were still hanging by the fireplace and felt them. Everything was dry now, so she gathered them up, along with all the items from her pockets that had been laid out on a shelf, and went into the bathroom to change.

The floor didn't feel so cold after she got her socks on. Faith put on her boots to make a quick trip to the outhouse. She was a little surprised by how much of an improvement she felt that was over her usual toilet arrangements from the last week. She caught sight of Beorn tending to the ponies in the stable on her way back to the house.

Everyone was up when she got back inside, and breakfast was ready. Bacon and eggs joined their usual fair of pancakes with butter and honey. Faith thought that it was all delicious, and thanked Marjukka as lavishly as her language skills would allow. This resulted in Marjukka giving her a second helping of everything.

Beorn came in as she was finishing her second helping. He declined to eat any of the bacon or eggs, but he did have a huge pile of pancakes, that he washed down with a generous tankard full of milk. He started to talk to Gandalf and Teuvo about the weather. It had been clear and cold when Faith was outside, with only a few wisps of high clouds, but Beorn seemed to be concerned about how it was going to change. She couldn't follow all of the conversation, but it was clear that he expected it to be snowing before the end of the day.

Gandalf, and Beorn turned their attention to her. "_You need a cloak,_" Gandalf told her.

Faith shook her head. "_No cloak. Not cold._"

"_It has been warm, these past days,_" said Gandalf. "_It will be colder from now on._" It took some repetitions, and several rephrasings to get his meaning across to her.

Faith shrugged. "_Not cold._" As long as she kept active, and had lots to eat, she knew she could handle a lot worse weather than what she'd seen so far. Nights might get a little hard for her, but the blankets of her bedroll were pretty warm.

Gandalf, Bilbo and Beorn didn't seem to be willing to accept that. Marjukka didn't believe it either. She went to a trunk, and started to dig through it. She came up with an old woollen cloak, with a hood, that looked like it had seen better days. Faith could see that it had been patched multiple times. Marjukka held it up, and called for Faith to come over to her.

Faith bowed to the inevitable, and went to try it on. It was a little big for her—Faith guessed that it was Marjukka's, and she was a large woman—but that would work out well: she could wear it over her leather jacket. It smelled a little musty, like it had been in the trunk for some time.

Faith still wasn't happy about taking it. These people were living out in the wilderness, and she didn't know how good their margin of survival was. Their comfortable house indicated that they were doing quite well, but winter was coming, and she was eating their food, and now taking some of their clothing. She didn't like the thought that Asla and Jaska might be going cold and hungry before spring came. It seemed that no one was going to take "no" for an answer, though.

They started to pack up to leave for what should be the final leg of their journey to Beorn's home. If Faith understood correctly, it was about five days journey away—assuming that the weather held, which, judging by Beorn and Gandalf's conversation that morning was not likely.

Beorn brought the ponies around, and their bedrolls and things were reloaded onto them. Bilbo went to one of the saddle bags on his pony, and started to rummage through it. Faith was surprised to see glints of gold coming from inside it. He pulled out a delicate gold chain, with a jewel pendant that Faith was pretty sure was an emerald.

Bilbo presented the necklace to Marjukka with a bow. "_Please accept this small token of our appreciation for your hospitality,_" (Of course Faith didn't exactly understand what he said, but she imagined that it was something like that.)

Marjukka was overwhelmed by the gift, and tried to refuse it, as Faith had tried to refuse her gift of the cloak, and with similar success. Bilbo was quite insistent that she take it. For Faith's part, she was quite surprised to learn what Bilbo had in his saddle bags. She had listened to his story about the dragon's treasure, but she hadn't really believed it. Even though neither Gandalf nor Beorn had ever said anything to indicate that his story wasn't true, there had always seemed to be a bit of an air of indulgence from Gandalf where Bilbo was concerned. Faith reminded herself to check her assumptions. There seemed to be quite a bit more to Mr. Baggins than met the eye.

* * *

The wisps of high cloud that Faith had seen earlier that day were lower and thicker as they set out from the farmstead, and the clouds continued to drop lower and become thicker as the day went on. The sky was completely overcast by noon, and the first flakes of snow started to fall.

The snow fall became heavier, and the wind started to pick up into the afternoon. Faith became glad that she had the cloak, and especially its hood to pull up over her head.

By late afternoon the visibility had dropped to less than a hundred yards, and Beorn was starting to look for a place for them to take shelter from the developing blizzard. They found it in a small copse of fir trees that cut the worst of the wind. Beorn and Faith were able to build a shelter for them and their ponies—a larger version of the lean-to she had made her first night—from some trees that he chopped down with his axe.

That night the only watch was kept on the fire, to make sure that it didn't go out. The others huddled together under shared blankets, sharing their body warmth too. Faith spent much of the night holding Bilbo in her arms. As the smallest of them, he was the most affected by the cold. She thought about what her friends back home would say about her spending the night sleeping with a midget. She wondered what they were doing. Were they still looking for her? Trying to discover what had happened to her? Was Willow working her magic to track Faith down and bring her back? At the moment, that seemed to be the best shot she had at ever getting home, and it didn't seem like a good one. She didn't know if there was anyone here who could send her home. She was holding the local equivalent of a Munchkin in her arms, but there was no yellow brick road; no "off to see the Wizard"; no Glinda to tell her to click her heels together, while saying "there's no place like home." She'd already tried the heel thing; it hadn't worked. She just might be stuck here for the rest of her life.

* * *

The blizzard howled on into the next day. Faith could tell that Bilbo was getting worried. "_Should we stay here?_" he asked the others, during a brief lull in the wind. "_Perhaps we could make it back to the farm._"

Gandalf shook his head. "_In this weather, it could take us days to reach it, and we could easily pass it in this storm. We are not far from Beorn's home now. The Forest Gate is only a league from here. If we wait out the storm, we should be able to reach Beorn's in a week, even through all this snow._"

"_Gandalf is right,_" said Beorn. "_While the blizzard lasts, we cannot move. Once it is over, it will be as easy to go forward as back._"

Bilbo turned to her. "_What do you think, Faith?_"

Faith was surprised that he'd asked her opinion. She had understood enough of what was said to know what they were discussing, and what their options were, but she didn't know this land at all. "_Your world, me not know. You go, I go,_" Bilbo seemed to understand what she meant. He and the others had become quite adept at interpreting her fractured Westron. She would go along with whatever the others decided. With both Gandalf and Beorn in agreement, it looked like they were staying put for a while.

* * *

The wind died down that evening, but the snow continued to fall. The temperature was rising, causing it to come down in large clumps of flakes. Faith stood with Beorn, watching the falling snow. "You know, if it wasn't so damn cold, this would be kinda beautiful," she told him.

He rumbled a non-committal response, which made sense, since he couldn't have understood what she said, but something about how he stood told her that he was thinking similar thoughts.

The night was silent. The falling snow absorbed any distant sounds. Faith could hear nothing but the crackling of their fire, but despite the stillness, and the beauty, she felt uneasy: like there was some threat lurking just out of sight; hidden by the darkness and the snow.

She tested her sword in its scabbard, making sure that she could draw it quickly. "_Is quiet,_" she told Beorn. "Too quiet," she added in English, with a grin.

Beorn didn't know why she smiled, but he seemed to share her unease. He shifted momentarily to his bear form, and sniffed at the air. "_Wargs!_" he growled after shifting back. "_Wake Gandalf and Bilbo!_"

Faith didn't know exactly what Wargs were, but she remembered them from Bilbo's stories, and knew that they were bad news. She quickly roused the others, and told them what Beorn had said.

Gandalf added more wood to their fire, making the flames rise higher. Faith could catch glimpses of shadows, circling their camp at the limit of the light, and the flash of reflected firelight in the eyes of whatever was out there.

She shed her cloak. She wouldn't be needing it to keep warm for the next little while, and she didn't want it interfering with her freedom to move. The deep snow made the footing uncertain enough, without having to worry about tripping over its hem.

Beorn moved the ponies into their lean-to, whispering encouragement in their ears to keep them from bolting. Once they were secured there, he shifted back into the large black bear.

Faith and Gandalf stood with their swords drawn, and their backs to the fire. Beorn stood between them. Bilbo stayed behind them, keeping the fire burning brightly, and with his small sword in hand. Faith was glad to see that he put up no false bravado. He knew his limitations in a fight like this. The best thing he could do was stay out of their way, while making sure that the fire continued to burn, and that the ponies didn't pull free from their tethers.

The Wargs slowly circled in closer. Faith could see them clearly now: large wolves, nearly as big as their ponies. There was a look about them that told Faith that these weren't normal wolves. There was a malevolent intelligence to their eyes: evaluating her and the others; looking for a weakness in their defences.

One of them decided that Faith was the weak link. It suddenly charged toward her. Faith stood her ground as it rushed at her, until the last instant, when she dodged to the side while bringing her sword down in a slice across the back of its neck, severing its spine. The Warg's body crumpled, and rolled to a stop behind her, its blood oozing out into the snow.

A blood curdling howl went up from the rest of the Wargs, and they attacked. None of them repeated the mistake that first one had made. They came at Faith and the others in twos and threes. They kept their distance now, trying to bait her into an attack of her own at one of them, which would create an opening for another that would allow it to get at Gandalf or Beorn from behind, or at Bilbo and the ponies. Similar actions were going on all around them, with Wargs trying to get past Gandalf and Beorn.

The Warg that Faith had killed was joined by others. One fell to Beorn's claws, and another to Glamdring, but there was no indication that this was making the Wargs reconsider their attack. Each new death only seemed to further enrage them. Faith had wounded several more, but none fatally. The snow all around her was splashed with blood, but so far, all of it came from the Wargs.

The combination of snow, packed down by her boots, and the blood from the Wargs was making the footing even more treacherous. The blood melted the snow that it spilled across, but it quickly cooled and froze again, making black ice in the darkness.

A Warg lunged at Faith. She tried to side-step it, but her foot slipped on the ice, forcing her to fall to her knees. The Warg was on her before she could recover. She couldn't bring her sword up before the Warg was inside its arc. It knocked her over onto her back, and its jaws moved for her throat. She felt a stab of pain as its claws raked her thigh.

Faith held the Warg off with one hand on its throat, and she bashed its jaws with the hilt of her sword, breaking several of its teeth. It howled in pain and rage, and tried even harder to get its teeth into her.

The Warg yelped, and pulled away from her. Faith caught a glimpse of Bilbo retreating, the tip of his sword bloody from where he had jabbed it into the Warg's ribs. The Warg tried to twist toward him, but Bilbo hit it on the nose with a brand he had taken from the fire, and was holding in his other hand. The Warg's movement gave Faith the room she needed to slash her sword across the beast's throat. Its hot blood sprayed across her, for the moments it took for the Warg to die, and then its body collapsed back down onto her.

Faith heaved the carcass off her, with some help from Bilbo. "Thanks!" she told him. She looked around. The Wargs had pulled back to regroup. They had left six of their fellows lying dead in the snow around the campsite. The remaining Wargs went back to circling their camp, at the periphery of their vision.

None of them got any more than cat-naps that night. The Wargs kept harrying them, probing for weakness, hoping to catch them off guard, or napping. Faith and Beorn both killed another before the sky started to brighten with the approach of dawn, and the Wargs finally faded away.

The snow had stopped falling shortly after midnight, and the sky had cleared. With the clear sky had come a sharp drop in the temperature. Faith's pants became stiff from the Warg blood frozen into them. Her leather jacket had repelled the worst of the blood that had spilled across it, but she had it in her hair as well. She wished she was like Beorn, and could wash her self by going and rolling naked in the snow. The Warg blood felt so gross that she was almost tempted to give it a try.

She did roll in her jacket, and rub snow into her hair to to wash out the worst of the blood. Bilbo melted snow in a pot over the fire so that they could all do some washing—while Faith was the worst, all of them were splattered with some blood.

It turned out that not all of the blood soaking Faith's pants had come from the Warg. While washing up, she discovered that she had received a nasty gash in her thigh from the claws of the Warg that had leapt on her. The wound must have bled profusely at first, but the bleeding had stopped. Faith was more concerned about the tear in her pants.

Gandalf insisted on cleaning and bandaging her wound. Faith made her comments about him being a dirty old man who just wanted to take a gander at her legs in English, but there was a twinkle in his eyes that made her think that he understood both the gist, and the spirit of what she said. She sometimes thought that he was picking up nearly as much English as she was Westron, though the only English words she had heard him speak were the ones like "cigarette," which had no local equivalent.

Speaking of cigarettes…Faith checked her pack…three left. She'd been saving them for special occasions. She planned to save one, just in case she managed to get laid, but she figured that surviving the Wargs was cause for celebration. She took one out, and lit it up.


	7. Part VII: Winterlude

**Part VII: Winterlude**

They broke their camp at sunrise, and set out through the snow. Travelling was harder now, with the snow more than knee deep for Faith and the ponies. It was a good thing that they had a pony for Bilbo, for the snow would have been waist deep on him.

Their progress was slow. Beorn scouted ahead, picking their route to avoid the worst of the snow drifts, but in some places they had no choice by to force their way through them. Beorn would sometimes become a bear in order to break a path that the ponies could follow. It wasn't just forcing their way through the snow that slowed them down. The ponies took longer foraging for food, having to dig their way down to find grass to eat. Beorn supplemented their diet with grain from sacks they were carrying.

They heard the Wargs howling in the distance, many times, and sometimes they would come across their tracks in the snow. The howls would be louder at night, and seemed to be closer, but they never saw the Wargs again. They still kept a careful watch through the night, with two of them awake at all times.

It was a tiring week. They, and their ponies, were starting to feel exhausted. Even Faith was feeling the strain, but she knew that their journey was nearing its end. Beorn had announced that morning that they would reach his home before the end of the day. The ponies set out with a new energy, as if they too knew that they were nearly home.

They came to the top of a hill. Faith looked down into a compound surrounded by trees, bare of their leaves, and high hedges. "_That you home?_" she asked Beorn.

"_Yes._" Beorn pointed to the left. "_This way._" He started down the hill, holding the lead pony's bridle to guide them. Faith took a moment to look things over from this vantage point.

The hedge surrounded a collection of buildings. Sheds, barns, and a large, single storey house. Faith thought that such a dwelling should have several people living in it, but from everything Beorn had said, she had gathered that he lived alone. As she looked, she could see animals moving around within the enclosure: horses, ponies, deer, sheep and dogs; but she could see no sign of anyone who might be tending them.

The others were already half way down the hill. Faith hurried to catch up with them. Beorn led them to a wide wooden gate in the hedge. He gave a loud whistle as he opened it, and the horses that were out in the compound came galloping to greet him with loud neighs and whinnies. Beorn spoke back to them, making similar noises.

The other animals came more slowly, and all received a similar greeting from Beorn. Faith had seen Beorn "talking" with the ponies, ever since she had met him, but she had always assumed that he was just making noises to reassure and comfort them. Now she wasn't so sure. Beorn talked with each of the animals in his compound, making the same sorts of noises that they made, but put together in ways that sounded like language. "Great!" she said to herself. "He's a friggin' Dr. Dolittle were-bear." This really was a very strange world that she'd landed herself in.

* * *

Beorn's house had a large main section, that consisted of a single hall. There was a fire-pit in the centre of it, with a hole in the roof over it to let the smoke escape. The long room had no windows. What light there was came from the fire, the hole in the roof, or torches stuck in brackets on the posts that supported the roof. There were two wings built off to each side of the main house. These contained storerooms, a kitchen, and Faith was very surprised to find a bathroom, and sauna. The bathtub was Beorn-sized, so it was nearly a swimming pool for her, or Bilbo.

The animals were just weird. The dogs would walk on their hind legs, while carrying things in their paws. Other animals would use their mouths. They acted as Beorn's household staff, cleaning, fetching and carrying on his instructions. Faith finally understood why Beorn was a vegetarian, if these were the sorts of animals that he usually associated with. She asked Gandalf if all animals in this world were so intelligent, and he assured her that animals such as those that lived in Beorn's compound were very rare indeed.

Bilbo and Gandalf planned to spend the winter with Beorn, before setting out on the final leg of their journey to Bilbo's home, and Beorn told Faith that she was welcome to stay too.

* * *

It didn't take long for Faith to start feeling some cabin fever. Beorn's place was nice enough, but she couldn't stay cooped up in it for months. It only took a couple of weeks for her to start feeling antsy. She knew that if she had to spend the whole winter there, she might kill someone.

Gandalf seemed to recognize her symptoms, and he had a solution for them: she started joining Beorn when he would leave to patrol the lands surrounding his home. She was outfitted with woollen leggings, gloves and mittens, and what she couldn't help calling "a cunning hat," thanks to Andrew making her watch those _Firefly_ DVDs. She learned to use skis that Beorn supplied her to glide quickly across the snow, following Beorn as he loped along in bear form. She kept most of her possessions in her pockets at all times: her cell phone, her keys, and the other things she had brought with her from Cleveland. Not because they were useful—the cell phone didn't even work as a camera anymore, its battery was dead—but because she just liked to have them with her. They reminded her of home, and if Willow somehow did manage to pull her back out of this world, she didn't want to lose her phone, with the pictures she had taken of this place.

Even with Faith carrying a pack with a couple of weeks worth of supplies in it, they could travel much more quickly than they had while accompanying Gandalf and Bilbo on the ponies. They could travel north, to Marjukka and Teuvo's farmstead, in just a few days, or south, to other farms scattered along the plain between the river Anduin, and the great forest of Mirkwood. They hunted the Wargs and the small bands of Orcs that remained in that land, driving them back across the river, and into the mountains.

Faith still spent most of the winter in Beorn's house, and she was always glad to return to it. After spending a week or so out in the cold, she looked forward to his sauna, even the rolling naked in the snow parts of it. These people didn't have a strong nakedness taboo, at least as far as the sauna was concerned. After returning from the Wild she and Beorn would spend many hours basking in its heat, with Gandalf and Bilbo giving her language lessons.

Outside of the sauna, Bilbo started to teach her to read, using the journal of his travels that he was writing. At other times she would catch sight of him carving something, but he always hid it away out of her sight when he saw her approach.

* * *

Yule-tide came, and with it many visitors from the farms surrounding Beorn's land. A great feast was held in his hall, with much mead and wine to drink. Beorn's vegetarianism didn't extend to fish, so it wasn't a completely meatless feast.

After dinner, the guests got out musical instruments that they had brought. There were fiddles, and flutes; there was singing, and dancing, and story telling; and more mead and wine, and a couple of drunken fights: so a good time was had by all. Bilbo's recitation of the tale of his adventure was a great hit with everyone.

Later in the evening, after things had quietened down, and most of the guests had gone to their beds, Bilbo drew Faith aside. "_I have made you a present._" He held out a small package to her.

"_You shouldn't have,_" said Faith. "_I don't have anything for you._"

Bilbo smiled at her. "_A gift given, in expectation of a gift received, is not a gift, it is merely a transaction. Go ahead, open it._"

Faith unwrapped her present carefully, being careful not to rip the parchment. She found that it contained a carved wooden pipe, and a small pouch of tobacco.

"_So this is what you've been hiding from me!_" said Faith. "_Thank you!_" She leaned down and kissed Bilbo's forehead, making him blush. She looked at the pouch of tobacco. "_But this must be nearly all you had left!_"

"_Only half of it,_" said Bilbo. "_I know that you are saving your last_ cigarette _for some special occasion, but now you can have something to smoke, until that happens._"

"_I have never smoked a pipe,_" said Faith. "_Get yours, and you can show me how._"

"_I just happen to have mine here,_" said Bilbo. He drew his pipe from a pocket in his waistcoat. Faith offered him the pouch of tobacco that he had given her. He took some, and showed Faith how to fill the pipe, how to tamp it down, and how to light it.

They sat together, smoking. Faith savoured the taste of the tobacco in her mouth, quite different from the cigarettes that she was used to. Bilbo made her laugh by blowing smoke rings. She tried to emulate him, but blowing rings was not a talent that she had mastered. When their pipes were done, they said "good night" to one another, and went to their beds.

* * *

By the time spring approached, Faith's ability to speak the language had improved to the point where she was able to tell Gandalf where she came from. He accepted her story much more readily than she expected.

"_I have travelled from one end of Middle Earth to the other, many times,_" he told her, "_and nowhere in this land have I encountered anyone who speaks your language, dresses as you do, has devices like your_ phone _or your_ wristwatch. _Nor have I seen anyone, Man or Eldar, who can fight like you do. I do not find it hard to believe that you are not from this world._"

"_Any idea how I'm supposed to get home?_" asked Faith.

"_I am afraid that I have none,_" said Gandalf. "_But I am not the only one of the wise. Spring will soon be here. There are others that you can consult, who may have knowledge that I do not._"

"Who are they?"

"_There is Saruman the White, who resides at Isengard, to the south of here, or Galadriel and Celeborn in the Golden Wood of Lórien. Lord Elrond lives across the mountains, in Imladris._"

"_Imladris, that's where you and Bilbo are going next, isn't it?_"

"_Yes, but you are under no obligation to continue with us. If you take a boat down the river, you can reach Lórien in a little more than a week, and from there you can continue on to Isengard, if the Lady of the Wood can not help you. The road across the mountains is a much more difficult path._"

"_I guess I'll have to sleep on it,_" said Faith.

* * *

Faith awoke in a familiar looking room. She was lying in a soft bed, with warm smooth sheets wrapped around her. Sunlight was streaming in the window. She sat up in the bed, and looked around. There was a reason this room was so familiar, even though it hadn't existed since the destruction of Sunnydale: it was Buffy's old bedroom. "Oh great, I'm dreaming."

Buffy looked up from the sheets she was folding. "Of course you are. How else could you get to my homely house."

"Please tell me that this isn't another one of those shared dreams of ours."

"Okay, this isn't another one of those shared dreams of ours."

"Why don't I believe you?"

Buffy shrugged. "We've always had trust issues."

"Aren't you supposed to be giving me some message?"

"Nope. I'm just folding the laundry." Buffy picked up another sheet, and shook the wrinkles out of it. Faith saw that there was a picture on it of a narrow forested valley. There was a river flowing through it, and at the head of the valley, a beautiful waterfall. Buffy looked down at it. "You like it?" she asked. "Maybe you should go there."

* * *

Faith sat up, the coarse feel of the blankets over her straw bed on a shelf at the side of Beorn's hall a stark contrast to the softness of the bed she remembered. She ran her mind through the events of the dream, fixing it in her memory. She didn't know if the dream was some sort of prophecy, her subconscious mind telling her something, or just an artifact of her feeling a little homesick, aggravated by the thought of soon being separated from Gandalf and Bilbo, but remembering dreams was something that all Slayers were taught to do. 


	8. Part VIII: Over the Mountains

**Part VIII: Over the Mountains**

Spring was announced with a great groan, followed by crashing and grinding as the ice on the river Anduin began to move. What had been a smooth expanse of white snow became a churning mass of broken ice in a matter of seconds. The water level rose quickly over the following week, and the spring flood overflowed the river's banks. It took nearly a month for the water levels to drop again to the point where it was safe to cross the river at the Old Ford.

Bilbo was eager to be on his way. Nearly a year had passed since he had left his Hobbit-hole under the hill overlooking Hobbiton, and he was anxious to get back to it. Faith wanted to be on her way too. She had enjoyed her winter in Beorn's hall, but this was the longest that she had stayed in one place since she had gotten out of prison. In the years following the destruction of Sunnydale she had become one of the Council's roaming trouble-shooters (she went where there was trouble, and she shot it (or more often staked, stabbed or beheaded it.)) She had only been in Cleveland because Vi had asked for a little time off so she could prepare for the defence of her master's thesis.

Beorn's compound was a riot of colours from newly blooming flowers when they packed up their ponies. The air was full of the black and gold of his bees, busily buzzing from blossom to blossom.

"_You don't have to come with us, Faith,_" said Bilbo, as he cinched his saddle tight. "_I'm sure that the way to Lórien is a much easier journey._"

"_Are you trying to get rid of me?_" asked Faith.

"_Of course not!_"

"_So stop suggesting I go someplace else!_" said Faith. "_Lórien, or Imladris doesn't make much difference to me. I'm just as likely to find my way home in either place._" Or unlikely, she didn't say out loud. "_Besides, I've grown accustomed to your company. I would like to see you safely across the mountains._" She still didn't know if her dream had been some sort of prophetic message, but she wasn't going to take the chance that it might not have been. With or without Bilbo and Gandalf, she was going to Imladris.

"_Your company on this journey will be most welcome,_" said Gandalf. "_Now come, we must be on our way!_" He climbed onto the large pony that Beorn had loaned for his use.

Faith climbed onto the pony that had been supplied for her, and Beorn led them all out the gate, and then down the trail that led to the Old Ford. Faith wasn't a great rider, never having done so until a few weeks earlier, but she quickly got the hang of it, letting her body move with the swaying of her mount. She didn't really need to guide her pony with her reins; it just naturally followed along behind Beorn, and Gandalf.

* * *

They came to the Old Ford in the late afternoon. After a brief discussion they decided to cross the river now, and camp on the far bank, so that their clothes would have the night to dry before they set out again in the morning. The water was still icy-cold, and nearly too deep for the ponies: rising high enough to soak the legs of their riders. In some places they needed Beorn's size and strength to keep the ponies from being swept away by the current.

The sun had started to sink behind the Misty Mountains in the west when they reached the far shore. Faith stripped off her wet pants to wring the excess water out of them. The early spring day was still warm enough to go with her legs bare while they made their camp, but the evening cooled quickly, so she had to put on her woollen leggings.

Beorn the bear had gone back into the river after they'd crossed, and caught some nice fish that Bilbo fried up for them. After dinner, and the cleanup, Gandalf and Bilbo went to bed, while Beorn and Faith stayed up for the first watch.

* * *

Morning dawned, bright and clear. After their breakfasts and packing up the ponies, the time came to say goodbye to Beorn. Faith gave him a hug before they parted.

"_I hope that you find your way to your home,_" said Beorn, "_But know that you will always be welcome in my hall, if you ever journey this way again._"

"_I'll remember that, big guy,_" said Faith. "_You take care of yourself._"

Beorn said goodbye to Bilbo, Gandalf, and their mounts. Gandalf promised that he would be returning this way, before next winter, and he would bring Beorn's animals back with him. After a final murmured goodbye into the ears of their ponies, Beorn transformed into a bear, and waded into the river.

They stayed on the western bank, watching until Beorn reached the far shore. He changed back into a man, and waved a final farewell to them before turning away, and starting the trip back to his home. Gandalf, Bilbo and Faith turned their backs to the morning sun, and started the long climb up the old road that led into the mountains.

* * *

There was still snow in the high mountain passes, and the weather didn't always stay fair. Some days were cold and miserable, with a mixture of sleet, and snow, and freezing rain driven by fierce winds. Ice on the rocks made the footing treacherous. They were sometimes delayed for a few days—waiting for the weather to warm, and for the ice covering the rocks to melt—before proceeding along some sections of the trail where a slip could lead to a fall of a hundred feet or more down a steep cliff.

As they got deeper into the mountains, Bilbo took to drawing his sword, Sting, at frequent intervals, and looking at its blade. He told Faith that it would glow blue if there were any Orcs about. These mountains had been crawling with the creatures, only a year ago, and the eastern slopes were still the main range of the Wargs.

Bilbo never saw even a glimmer of blue on his sword, and though they heard some Wargs howling in the distance, they never saw any. The Wargs, it seemed, remembered Faith hunting them over the winter, and weren't risking coming close to her.

There came a day when Bilbo got so nervous about the possibility of Orcs attacking them that he drew Sting completely from its scabbard, and carried it in front of him, resting on the pommel of his saddle. This was a day that they traversed a narrow ledge above a deep valley. Gandalf was wary here too, for they were about to pass the entrance to the cave in which they had taken shelter from a storm, and had been captured by the Orcs during their previous crossing of these mountains, last summer.

"_There!_" said Gandalf, just past noon. "_There is where the cave was._"

The cave entrance was now buried under a recent rock fall, which made Bilbo relax considerably. He let out a great sigh of relief as they passed it, and he was considerably cheered when they made camp that evening.

"_We are nearly to the top!_" Bilbo told Faith as he prepared their evening meal. "_And from there, it will be all down hill to the First Homely House at Imladris!_"

Faith pretended to share his good cheer, but she didn't. This leg of their trip had gone too well for her liking. Their luck had been too good, and that was sure to be balanced out by some bad luck soon.

* * *

They finally reached the top of the highest pass. The day was warm, and the sky was a cloudless blue. The lands to the west of the mountains lay below them in waves of green that stretched to the horizon. Bilbo peered at the landscape eagerly, as if hoping that he could catch a glimpse of the Shire, though that land was still too distant, lost behind the curvature of the world.

* * *

The way down was no less treacherous than the way up had been, though the weather had continued to warm, and they were delayed by ice and snow less often, and when the rocks were covered with ice, it melted more swiftly.

They were caught traversing another ledge as the sun was setting a few days later. They were all on foot, leading their ponies along the narrow way. The bottom of the valley below them on the left was already lost in the shadows of night, and a cliff rose up on the right. Gandalf had misremembered how long this ledge was, and had been sure that they could reach the end of it—where there would be a wide alpine meadow in which they could camp, and let their ponies graze—before nightfall. The sun disappeared behind the mountains while they still had a long way to go, and the path would become even more treacherous in the dark.

Gandalf had passed what looked like an innocuous pile of moss-covered rocks, when it moved. "_Troll!_" cried Bilbo as the creature rose up onto its slab-like toeless feet.

Gandalf turned, raising his staff. A bright flash of white light came from the head of it. The troll cringed away from the light, and lashed out with its club. It caught Gandalf with a glancing blow. It was still enough to knock him flying through the air. His staff fell to the ground, and Gandalf vanished over the lip of the ledge.

"**_No!_**" cried Bilbo. He drew Sting, and rushed forward to where Gandalf had disappeared. The troll caught him with the back-swing of its club, smacking him back against the wall of the cliff rising above them. Sting was sent spinning away from him, and clattered to the ground behind Faith.

Faith drew her sword and charged at the troll. She parried a blow from its club, and struck at the creature's neck. It felt like she had struck a rock, and her blade shattered with the impact. She was left holding the hilt, with barely six inches of blade attached. The troll swung its club again, and this time it connected with her, knocking her back along the ledge.

Bilbo groaned on the ground, drawing the attention of the troll back to him. It raised its club, and smashed it down with enough force to turn Bilbo into a bloody smear on the rocks, and it would have if Bilbo hadn't managed to roll out of the way at the last instant. The troll raised its club to try again.

Faith saw Sting lying beside her. She grabbed the short sword, and threw it, with all her might. The blade completed a perfect single revolution as it flew through the air, and stabbed into the troll's shoulder. The troll roared in pain, and dropped its club. It reached back with its other hand, to grab the elvish blade, and pull it out. The blade sliced into its hand, and it dropped it to the ground.

The troll seemed to have forgotten about Bilbo now. It moved toward where Faith was still sitting on the ground. It had also forgotten about its club. It reached down toward her with both hands.

Faith rolled back as the troll leaned over her. Her feet came up into the troll's stomach. With her back braced against the ground, she pushed up and out with both legs, throwing the troll away from her. It landed on its feet, but it was still moving backwards. It stepped back to regain its balance, but its foot met only air. Its arms windmilled as it tried to recover, but it was too late. The troll vanished off the ledge, only a few feet from where Gandalf had gone over.

It seemed like several seconds before Faith heard the crash of the troll's impact below them. She crawled to the edge, and looked down. She could see a cloud of dust, and a tumbling landslide in the talus slope of broken rock at the foot of the cliff, but she couldn't see the troll itself, or any sign of Gandalf.

She heard Bilbo crawl up beside her. "_Gandalf?_" he asked.

"_I don't see him,_" said Faith. She moved to her right. "_I think he went over more this way._"

"_I am here!_" called out Gandalf from below them.

"_There!_" cried Bilbo, pointing to a hand grasping a rocky outcrop.

"_Hang on!_" said Faith, "_We're coming!_" She looked around for their mounts. Each of them had a length of rope as part of their supplies, but there was no sign of them. Gandalf and Bilbo's ponies had bolted ahead along the ledge, and hers and the pack pony had bolted back. There was only one thing to do. "_Hold my feet,_" she told Bilbo.

Faith lay on the ground, extending her upper body down over the edge. Bilbo placed his full weight across the backs of Faith's calves as she reached down. Faith was keenly aware that he didn't really weigh all that much. If this didn't work all three of them might end up following the troll down the mountainside.

Faith moved as much of herself off the ledge as she dared, with Bilbo acting as a counterweight. She was barely able to reach as far as Gandalf's wrist. She grabbed it, and lifted him far enough to reach a higher purchase on the cliff face, where he could hold on long enough for her to move herself back a bit to a slightly less precarious position, before she grabbed him again, and lifted him higher.

It took a couple of repetitions to get Gandalf high enough that his feet were no longer swinging in the air, and he could find the footholds he needed to climb the rest of the way back onto the ledge by himself.

Faith pulled herself back up onto the ledge, and rolled away from the edge. She lay there for a moment, catching her breath. "_You gave us a bit of a fright there,_ G."

"_Today was not my time to fall into shadow,_" said Gandalf.


	9. Part IX: The First Homely House

Part IX: The First Homely House

Faith sent Bilbo and Gandalf ahead, after their ponies, while she went back to collect her own, and their heavily laden pack pony. She was better able to navigate the narrow ledge in the gathering darkness. She found the ponies a few hundred yards back along the ledge. It took some encouragement, but she managed to lead them back to the meadow where Bilbo and Gandalf had already started to make their camp.

Bilbo surprised Faith by having collected all the pieces of her broken sword. "_The smiths in Imladris will be able to re-forge it,_" he told her when she asked why he'd bothered. "_They will remake it, better than it was before._"

"They have the technology, eh?" asked Faith with a grin, which earned her an enquiring look from Bilbo, as usually happened when she slipped into English. She sighed. "_That was a bad joke, that doesn't really translate._"

Faith had heard Bilbo say a lot of things about the Eldar, and their skills, but she had her doubts about their ability to fix her sword. It had been the best that 21st century metallurgy and craftsmanship had been able to produce—the New Council only wanted the best for their Slayers. How could the seemingly mediæval culture she had found herself in match it? On the other hand the Eldar had made made Sting, and it had cut into that troll when her own sword had only shattered when she struck it.

She didn't worry about it. She just took the pieces of the sword that Bilbo gave her and packed them away. She would take things as they came to her. Even if they couldn't remake her sword as good as new, the steel it was made from was still better than anything she had seen since landing in this world (with the exceptions of Glamdring and Sting.) It could still be used to make a better sword than any of the others she'd seen.

* * *

The next morning was clear and cold. The meadow was covered with frost, but it quickly melted as the sun rose above the mountain tops. They ate their breakfast, and packed up the ponies.

The day warmed quickly, as did the days that followed. They moved down from the mountain pass and they started to come back in amongst trees. The first trees they saw were stunted pines, but they grew larger, the lower they came. Other trees, birch and beech, with the green buds of new growth showing at the tips of their branches replaced the pines. Soon the only snow they saw was lying in deeply shaded crevasses in the rocks, and shaded hollows beneath the trees.

Their path came to a mountain stream, swollen with the melt water coming from higher up the mountain. It grew quickly as they followed it. Tributaries joined the stream, swelling it into a raging torrent of water: the headwaters of the river Bruinen, that flowed into Imladris.

They were all tired, especially their heavily laden pack pony, but they pushed ahead, knowing that they were approaching the end of their journey.

They came to a waterfall that Faith recognized. It was the waterfall from her dream. "Okay, points for the prophetic dream theory," she told herself as they started down a steep, narrow path into the valley.

Faith became aware of singing coming from the trees around them:

_The dragon is withered,  
His bones are now crumbled;  
His armour is shivered,  
His splendour is humbled!  
Though sword shall be rusted,  
And throne and crown perish  
With strength that men trusted  
And wealth that they cherish,  
Here grass is still growing,  
And leaves are yet swinging,  
The white water flowing,  
And Eldar yet singing  
Come! Tra-la-la-lally!  
Come back to the valley!_

The song went on and on like that, full of tra-la-las and fa-la-las: the sort of music that Faith usually wouldn't be caught dead listening to, but there was a pureness, and clarity to the singing voices that entranced her. She could feel that her pony was reacting to it as well. It was reenergized, moving with a fresh spring in its step.

The Eldar came out of the trees, and led them across the river to the First Homely House. Their ponies were relieved of their burdens, and taken to the stables, where they were fed with fresh hay, and oats, and their coats were brushed until they shone.

Faith had never seen anyone quite like the Eldar. They were the most beautiful people she had ever seen. They seemed to be both old, and young at the same time. They took a childlike delight in the world around them, always singing, and joyful. But there was always an undercurrent of sadness in their songs. Elrond was the greatest enigma of them all. To look at him, Faith would have guessed that he was in his 30s, most of the time. But there was an air about him that made him seem ancient. At other times he seemed to be little more than a teenager. She had heard enough about him from Bilbo to know that he was really thousands of years old.

A magnificent meal had been laid on for them. Faith's attention kept wandering back to Elrond, all through it, and she caught him giving her surreptitious glances from time to time too.

After dinner came the stories. Gandalf told the story about Bilbo and the Dwarves' quest to Erebor that Faith had heard a dozen times already, and then he told about the meeting of the White Council, and driving the Necromancer out of southern Mirkwood. He told of the Battle of the Five Armies, their journey home, and their meeting with Faith.

More stories came after Gandalf was done. Tales of times long gone, and people long dead. The stories went late into the night, until Bilbo nodded off to sleep in a corner.

Faith smiled at the snoring hobbit. "_I think we've worn him out. I didn't think it was possible for him to conk out when there were stories being told._"

"_He has had a long journey,_" said Elrond. "_Now is the time for you to rest._"

Faith lifted Bilbo into her arms, and she was guided to a room where she laid him in a bed. She was shown to a room of her own. One with a bed with a soft mattress, and silky sheets: better than any she had ever experienced in all her life. She was asleep within seconds of hitting the mattress.

* * *

They spent a week in the House of Elrond, resting, dancing, and listening to the songs and stories of the Eldar. Faith told the story of how she came to this world to Elrond, but he had never heard of anything like that having happened before.

At the end of the week Bilbo was anxious to be on his way. He was nearly home, and he wanted to set out on the last road as quickly as possible. Faith wanted to go with him.

"_I think you should stay here,_" said Gandalf.

"_And why is that?_"

"_I do not know, for certain,_" said Gandalf. "_But I know that your road does not lead to the West. Rest here, and after I see Bilbo safely home, I shall return. I will guide you south through the Gap of Rohan to Isengard, to consult with Saruman, and, if he has no answer for you, north to Galadriel and Celeborn in Lórien. I will be travelling that way, to return our ponies to Beorn. If there is any answer for you in Middle Earth, Saruman, Galadriel or Celeborn should be able to give it to you._"

* * *

Faith was embarrassed to find that she was fighting off tears on the morning when she bade farewell to Bilbo. She gave him a hug, and a kiss. "_I wish I was coming with you._"

"_I would welcome you,_" said Bilbo, "_but the people of the Shire are wary of the big folk. I wish it wasn't so, but you would not be welcome there._"

"_Hey, no problem!_" said Faith. "_There's a lot of taverns where I'm not welcome either!_" She gave him another hug. "_You take care of yourself, and if you have any problems that need pummelling, don't hesitate giving me a call._"

"_Goodbye, Faith,_" said Bilbo. "_I shall miss you._"

"_Go! If we keep this up, we'll embarrass each other!_"

Bilbo went, with Gandalf riding beside him, and their pack pony following behind. Faith blinked, trying to clear the tears forming in her eyes, as she watched them depart.

* * *

Faith spent the next week relaxing: sleeping in a bed with silken sheets, taking long, hot, baths, and generally enjoying the indoor plumbing. The evenings were pleasant: filled with music and dancing. Not the sort of music or dancing that Faith was used to, but one or two of the Eldar took an interest in learning to dance her way.

Her clothes had been taken away to be mended, and she was supplied with new gowns. They were all much too feminine for her taste, but they were very comfortable. She also got new underwear, that felt wonderful next to her skin. She was still happy to get her own clothes back: mended perfectly, so you couldn't even see where the tears, and rough patches that she had applied herself, had been.

She made daily trips to the smiths' forge, to check on the progress being made repairing her sword. It was taking longer than she had expected. The Eldar smiths refused to rush the process. It wasn't just the blade that was being remade. There seemed to be half a dozen Eldar involved in the process: one to melt down the old blade, and carefully add small amounts of new metal, bits of mithril and other things to create a new alloy; another to beat the new metal into the rough shape of the new blade; a third to take that blade and refine it, creating a razor sharp edge on it; a fourth to take that blade and polish it. While they were doing that, others were building a new grip for the hilt, custom fitted to Faith's hand, and a new scabbard to perfectly fit the new blade.

Before they had begun the forging of her new sword, the swordsmiths had spent a day with Faith, having her try various blades that they had in their collection: seeing how she handled them, asking her preferences for weight and balance. They had brought in Glorfindel, an Eldar swordmaster, to fence with her: to see how she handled a blade, and to observe her preferred style. Both Faith, and Glorfindel, had been surprised by how good their opponent had been in those practice matches. It became a daily ritual for them to meet, and practice fencing with each other.

Bilbo and Gandalf had been gone for over a week. The morning was sunny and warm, and Faith decided to go for a walk. She set out, following along the riverbank, up toward the waterfalls. The day continued to warm as the sun rose in the sky, and Faith found that she was starting to sweat a bit. She was feeling quite warm, even after taking off her leather jacket. The path she was following turned aside from the main river, following a small tributary stream that burbled over the rocks as it came down the hill. She followed the path up the hill. It took her into a small grotto with a crystal clear pool of water into which a small waterfall poured. Steps had been carved in the rock leading down into the pool.

Faith looked around. She was completely alone here. She hadn't seen or heard any sign of anyone since she had left Imladris. She could hear nothing but the splashing of water, and the singing of birds. The pool seemed to be calling to her. She grinned, stripped off her clothes, left them lying on the rocks, and dove in.

The water surprised her by being much colder than she had expected. It almost felt like one of the rolls in the snow she had taken after spending time in Beorn's sauna. She let out a loud "Whoop!" when she surfaced, and heard it reverberate off the rocks. She stayed in the pool, treading water, and looking around some more. She smiled when she saw steps carved into the cliff face beside the waterfall, leading up to a ledge forty feet above her: perfect for jumping off. She swam over to the steps, and climbed up them. She had been a little worried that the rocks might be slippery, but the steps had a textured finish to them that gave her wet feet traction. She quickly clambered up to the ledge, and with another "Whoop!" she jumped off it, back down into the pool.

Faith made several jumps off that ledge, and explored the rest of the pool. There was another ledge, just under the waterfall on which she could sit, or stand, and let the water pour down over her. That's where she was sitting, when she stopped being alone.

Glorfindel had appeared at the top of the steps leading down to the pool. He quickly turned away after he caught a glimpse of her. "_I beg your pardon, Lady. I did not know you were bathing. I was sent with a message for you._"

Faith folded her arms over her bare breasts. "_No begging required. What's the message?_"

Glorfindel kept his back to her. "_The smiths have finished your sword, Lady._"

"_What's with this 'Lady' stuff all of a sudden?_" asked Faith. "I ain't no Lady."

She saw his shoulders shrug. "_It seemed appropriate, after my rudeness for intruding on you this way._"

"_You couldn't know._" Faith slipped off the ledge, back into the pool. "_So instead of getting all formal on me, why don't you come down here and join me?_"

* * *

It was a couple of hours before Faith and Glorfindel got back to the smiths. They hadn't had any towels so they had spent time basking on the sun-warmed rocks, drying off after their swim, before they got dressed again.

Faith hadn't seen her sword for several days, not since it had handed off to the polisher for the final finish. The polisher had not allowed her to observe his progress. She had been shown the polishing of other blades, and been taught how to properly care for one, so she would be able to maintain her own sword after she received it, but he had kept her own blade hidden from her.

The smiths brought out her new sword, in its scabbard. Presented like this, it looked rather plain. The scabbard was wrapped in leather with a matt black finish, as was the hilt of her sword. There was nothing shiny on the guard, or the pommel; nothing to reflect light that might give away her position if she was out hunting at night. It was exactly how she had asked them to make it. Looking closer she could see that the scabbard wasn't really all that plain. Subtle patterns were visible in the leather: writing in the Eldar script, that they told her identified the smith who had made it, and Faith as its owner.

She drew the sword, and gasped. "This is a thing of beauty!" She smiled as she turned her hand to look at the gleaming blade. "_This is wonderful!_" she told the waiting smiths. "_Thank you, all!_"

The blade was polished to a mirror finish. She held it close, and could see a pattern like ripples of water in the steel. More Eldar script was etched into the blade. "_What does this say?_" she asked.

"Magor Raugin," said the smith who had polished it. "_It would translate to 'Slayer of Demons,'_"

"Cool!" said Faith. She stepped back to give herself room, and gave the sword a few practice swings through the air. It felt perfect to her. The balance was just right. The grip fit her hand flawlessly. She sheathed it back into its scabbard, and moved toward the smiths again. "_Thank you all!_" She gave each of them a quick kiss.

* * *

Faith and Glorfindel were taking her sword back to her room. Faith heard some shouting in Eldar coming from up ahead of them. The voice sounded something like a girl to her, but not. She didn't understand any of the words, but the voice sounded playful. She cast a quick look at Glorfindel to see what he made of this, and saw him smiling.

They entered a small courtyard, and Faith was surprised to see a young, dark haired, boy, maybe ten years old, swinging a wooden sword at invisible opponents.

"_Ho! What foe are you fighting, Estel?_" asked Glorfindel.

The boy turned toward them with his sword raised. "_I am not Estel! I am Beren! And I'm hunting Orcs!_"

"_Are there many Orcs hiding in the courtyards of Imladris?_" asked Faith.

"_This isn't Imladris. We're in the mountains of Dorthonion!_"

"_Oh,_" said Faith, "_My mistake._"

Estel raised his wooden sword. "_Are you a servant of Morgoth, in disguise?_"

Faith smiled. "_If I was, I'd be pretty silly to tell you, now wouldn't I?_"

"_I think you are!_"

Faith raised her scabbarded sword. "_So, what are you going to do about it?_"

Estel tried to swing his sword under Faith's, but she quickly countered the move, and came back with a thrust of her own, slow enough that Estel had lots of time to deflect it. She didn't worry about what his wooden sword might do to her new scabbard: it had been made to withstand much more than what a child's toy sword might be able to do to it.

Faith mostly kept herself on the defensive, letting Estel attack her, slowing her responses down to the point where it seemed at times that he almost managed to get past her defence to land a blow. When she attacked, she did so carefully, and slowly enough that Estel could block her.

She was still surprised by how good he was. This child would be a match for many of the adult Watchers that Faith had fenced with. And he learned quickly. A couple of Faith's early feints had nearly fooled him, but he never fell for the same trick twice in a row.

Faith was aware that Glorfindel was watching them with amusement, and soon a few more people joined him. One was a woman with eyes and hair that reminded her of Estel's, and she was looking on with much less amusement than some of the others. Faith decided to end the game, and let Estel's sword slip past her defence, to strike her ribs.

She fell back, and clutched at her 'wound.' "_Ahh! You slay me!_" She flopped over and lay still on the ground for a moment, before she sat up again, and smiled at the boy. "_You are very good._"

The boy wasn't smiling. "_You let me win._"

"_Yeah, I did,_" said Faith. "_But no mere servant of Morgoth could defeat Beren Erchamion, could she?_"

Estel smiled at that. "_No, she couldn't._"

Glorfindel brought the woman who looked like Estel over, and Faith wasn't the least bit surprised when he introduced her as Estel's mother, Gilraen. "_Faith is a friend of Mithrandir's._"

That recommendation made Gilraen look on Faith much more favourably. "_It is an honour to meet you, Faith._"

"Likewise," said Faith, holding out her hand. "_Estel is a fine boy. I'm surprised I hadn't seen him around, before today._"

"_We have been away, visiting kin,_" said Gilraen. "_We only returned this morning._"

"_I hope that we will see more of each other,_" said Faith.

"_I am sure that we will,_" said Gilraen. "_But now, it is time for Estel to go to his lessons. I look forward to meeting you again, Lady Faith._"

Faith smiled as Gilraen took a protesting Estel away. He seemed to enjoy his lessons about as much as any ten year old boy, when he could have been out playing. Faith turned back to Glorfindel, after they had gone. "_So, that little bit of swordplay got me a sweaty again. Want to come scrub my back?_"

* * *

Faith sat on her balcony in the moonlight, smoking her last cigarette. Ever since skinny dipping with Glorfindel that morning she had been reminded of an itch that hadn't been scratched for a very long time. It turned out that Glorfindel had scratched it very well indeed. She guessed that being thousands of years old gave a fellow lots of time to develop his technique. She took a final drag on her cigarette, and blew out a cloud of blue smoke. She watched it drift away on the gentle night breeze as she butted out the stub of her cigarette. She could hear stirring in the room behind her, and smiled. Glorfindel had done well in the technique department. Time to see what his stamina was like. She went back to where he was waiting in her bed.

* * *

_Back to the Valley_ taken from _The Hobbit, Chapter IXX, The Last Stage._


	10. Part X: There's No Place Like Home

**Part X: There's No Place Like Home**

Glorfindel was teaching Estel how to fence, and Faith joined the lessons. It gave her something to do while she waited for Gandalf to return. He and Bilbo had left Imladris three weeks ago. It should take them about a month to reach the Shire, so if he started on the return journey right away, it would still be five weeks before she saw him again. If Faith had had a calendar, she'd have been marking off the days on it. It wasn't that she wasn't enjoying her stay in Imladris. It was a beautiful place, and Glorfindel was providing her with a wonderful distraction, but there was a sameness to all the days here that got very boring after a while.

Glorfindel wasn't her only distraction. Estel was always fun to be around. As a student in the use of the sword he was always surprising her with how quickly he learned, and he brought a youthful exuberance to everything he did: something that was generally lacking in the Eldar. For all their laugher, songs and dancing, they always gave the impression of great age. There was no urgency to anything they did. Faith sometimes got the impression that they considered "soon" to be any time in the next century or so. The reforging of her sword was something that had taken place at a breakneck pace for them.

Word came to Faith one morning that visitors had arrived. At first she was afraid that it might be Gandalf, back early for some reason, because any reason that had him returning this quickly couldn't be good. She quickly learned that this was not the case. A party of Dúnedain had arrived in Imladris.

* * *

Faith was a little surprised when Elrond summoned her, just before lunch. Glorfindel led her to an elegant courtyard with a fountain, shaded by blossoming apple trees. Elrond was there, with half a dozen men. Most of them were tall, fit, and dark haired. One of them might have been dark haired when he was younger, but now his hair was mostly grey. She had been around the Eldar so much that at first he looked old to her, but his back was straight, and his movements were sure. He didn't have the ancient appearance of Gandalf. He was really no more than middle aged. She decided that the word "distinguished" fitted him perfectly. She thought that Giles might look much like this man, if he grew his hair a foot, and dressed like someone out of a Robin Hood movie.

"_Faith, I would like to introduce you to Dírhael,_" said Elrond.

The man inclined his head in a slight bow to her. "_Lady Faith._"

Faith bowed in turn, no more than he had, "_Faith, at your service,_" she said, repeating the phrase that Bilbo had first taught her many months ago, but now she knew what it meant.

"_And I am at yours,_" said Dírhael. "_Lord Elrond tells me that you may be able to help us with a problem._" He sounded a little doubtful.

"_What sort of problem?_" asked Faith.

"_There is an evil creature in the woods, north of here,_" said Dírhael. "_It has killed several people, some of them among the finest of our Rangers. We have been hunting it for weeks, but every time we get close, it slips away from us. We came to Imladris, hoping that the Eldar could help us eliminate this threat from the Western lands._"

"_What sort of creature is it?_" asked Faith.

"_I can not say, for certain, for none who have seen it, have lived to describe it,_" said Dírhael. "_From its spoor, we know it is large. It walks sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four. Its hind feet are the length of my forearm, with three toes, each with a claw as long as my finger at the end of it. Its fore feet are half that size, but their claws are larger. It is taller than a man, even when walking on all fours._"

"_That's a lot of description, for something that no one's seen._" Faith didn't say that it also sounded a lot like something she _had_ seen.

"_It was plain, to even a novice tracker,_" said Dírhael, his doubts about Faith's ability to help him plain in the tone of his voice.

"_I'm not much for the tracking,_" said Faith. "_I let others handle that. I'm the girl who kills it after the trackers have found it._"

That comment got derisive laughter from most of the men who were present. It was a sound that Faith knew well. Once upon a time, it would have led to men with broken bones, lying bleeding on the floor. Now, she usually settled for bruising them. She looked toward Elrond, this was his house after all, and they were his guests. She saw him give her a slight nod in response.

Three seconds later, every man who had laughed was lying on the floor, groaning in pain. Dírhael, and one other, were still on their feet. They had backed away from the conflict, without entering it, but the other man had drawn his sword as he pulled back, into a purely defensive position.

Faith looked him in the eyes, as she drew her sword. "_Want to give me a try, boy?_"

"_Faith,_" said Elrond, with a note of warning in his voice.

Faith glanced aside at him. "_I know, no bloodshed._" She turned her attention back to the man, and smiled. "_Just a little playing._" Faith passed her sword across into her left hand, and gave the man a Neoesque "Come and get it." gesture with her right. She saw a look of determination come into his eyes, and he attacked her.

Faith parried his attack easily. She knocked his sword down, grasped his wrist with her free right hand, and pulled him toward her. Her sword came up and stopped, just short of his throat. "_You lose._"

His hand opened, dropping his sword. "_After what you did to the others, I thought I might._"

"_But you tried anyway,_" said Faith as she released him.

"_Sometimes, that is all that you can do,_" said the man.

"_I like you. What's your name?_"

"_Calrohn, Lady Faith._"

"_Just 'Faith' will do._" She looked to Dírhael, who hadn't moved since the fight had begun. "_Satisfied?_"

"_My apologies, Lady Faith. Lord Elrond told me that you were a capable warrior; I should not have doubted his word._"

"_I believe that Faith and Glorfindel will be quite helpful to you, in tracking and disposing of this creature,_" said Elrond.

They spent some time discussing their plans over lunch. Dírhael intended to set out early the next morning, which was fine with Faith. It wasn't like she had a lot she had to pack. The group broke up after lunch, with most of the men going off to the rooms that had been prepared for them. Faith told Dírhael that it was time for Estel's fencing lesson, and Glorfindel invited him to come along. Dírhael accepted the invitation quickly, and there was a look of anticipation about him that Faith found puzzling. He seemed very eager to see a child's lesson. Glorfindel wasn't the least bit surprised by his quick acceptance though.

Estel was already waiting for them in the fencing salle, and the reason for Glorfindel's invitation, and Dírhael's quick acceptance became instantly clear to Faith. "**_Grandfather!_**" cried Estel, and he launched himself toward Dírhael.

Dírhael caught the boy as he jumped into his arms "_**Ooof!** You've grown, lad! I can't believe how strong you're getting!_" He set Estel back down on the ground, after giving him a powerful hug.

"_Faith and Glorfindel have been teaching me the sword, Grandfather, and Faith is also teaching me unarmed combat!_"

Dírhael gave Faith a look. "_Unarmed combat?_"

Faith shrugged. "_Sometimes, you don't have a sword, or a knife, or any other weapons. All you've got is yourself. If you know what to do with it, that's all you need._"

* * *

Faith awoke before dawn, left Glorfindel sleeping in her bed, and packed up the things she would need for this demon hunt. She had obtained several Eldar gowns that she would not be bringing with her, though now she did have several changes of underwear that went into her pack. She considered leaving her keys, and her phone behind, but they had become like good luck talismans to her, and so they went into their accustomed places in her pockets.

Estel and Gilraen saw them off at first light the next morning. Faith was back on the pony that Beorn had leant her, and feeling rather small, surrounded by the men and Glorfindel, who were all riding horses. She had wondered if she should have borrowed a horse from Elrond's stables, but Glorfindel had assured her that her sturdy little pony would be well suited to the trails that they would be following.

It became apparent within a day that Glorfindel was right. The men and Eldar on their horses often had to duck under branches that Faith rode under with clearance to spare, and the twisty paths they followed never gave the horses a chance to move faster than a walk. Faith's pony had no trouble keeping up with them. Indeed, at times, it seemed quite impatient with the slow pace being set by the horses.

They travelled north for two days, before they reached the area where the creature they were hunting had last been reported. They quartered the area, looking for any sign of it. It didn't take long to find its trail, but after following it for a few miles they lost it again. It just seemed to stop. Dírhael estimated that the trail left by the creature was about a week old. They spread out again, searching for any sign. Faith wasn't much of a tracker, so she stuck close to Glorfindel, trusting his eyes, and millennia of experience.

They found, and lost the trail again several times over the next few days, but each time they seemed to be closer. The creature was moving in a north-easterly direction. Near sundown on the fifth day, they picked up the trail again. This time Dírhael and the other trackers agreed that the spoor was only a few hours old. They were close, but they didn't have enough daylight to pursue it. Faith wanted to continue.

"_It is foolish, to try to hunt this creature at night,_" said Calrohn.

"_I do my best hunting in the dark,_" said Faith.

"_But you do not have the skill to track this beast,_" said Dírhael. "_Especially in the dark._"

"_I'm getting better,_" said Faith. "_There is a moon tonight; I can see just fine. Glorfindel has taught me a lot this week, and we're close enough that I don't need to see its tracks. I can feel it._"

"_And she will not be alone,_" said Glorfindel. "_The Eldar also have sharp eyes in the dark._"

* * *

Faith and Glorfindel tracked the demon through the night. Faith was sure that it was a demon now. She had been feeling its presence growing for the last few days, a growing knot in her gut as they had closed in on it, made all the sharper by not having sensed a demon since she had arrived in Middle Earth. Neither the Orcs, Wargs, nor Troll had affected her the way this thing was.

The knot wasn't just caused by what she was feeling. The more she saw of this thing's tracks, the more she knew that she had seen tracks just like them before.

* * *

Faith looked through a gap in the brush that she had been crawling through, toward the sound of something up ahead. She saw the demon. "Oh fuck!" She had been hoping against hope that she'd been wrong. That the size of the thing, and the footprints it left had just been a coincidence, but now there was no denying it. The demon looked something like a small, furry, tailless, tyrannosaurus-rex. Small for a tyrannosaurus, anyway, it still stood six feet tall at its haunches.

Its front legs were larger than a T-rex's as well. When moving slowly it walked on all fours, but it could rise up onto its powerful hind legs for a quick sprint after prey. Its head made up a third of its length, and that head had a huge mouth, full of very sharp teeth.

It was an Unpronounceable Demon. That wasn't its real name, of course. Its real name was full of clicks and whistles, and far too many consonants to be pronounceable by Faith, but Andrew could produce an acceptable approximation of it. At least he claimed it was acceptable, and she hadn't bothered to check to see if he was right.

Glorfindel looked surprised by her outburst. "_Do you not think we can kill this beast?_" he asked.

"_Oh, I can kill it, all right,_" said Faith. "_I've killed one of these before. About six months ago._"

"_Six months? But that is when you came to Middle Earth._"

Faith saw dawning comprehension on Glorfindel's face. "_Exactly. And it was one of this thing's cousins that sent me here._" Faith tried to climb to her feet. "_Well, it's been nice knowing you. Give my regards to Gandalf when he gets back, and tell him 'thank you,' for all the help he's given me._"

Glorfindel grabbed her arm to hold her down. "_You don't mean to fight this creature alone?_"

"_That's precisely what I mean to do,_" said Faith. "_If it happens again, I don't want to see anyone else banished from their home._"

"_There must be some other way. Attack it from a distance, with arrows._"

"_That might work, if we had brought along a bow, but we didn't. And by the time we go to get one, this thing will have moved on, and it might have killed someone else._"

"_I am _not _letting you face this creature alone!_"

"_Fine,_" said Faith. "_But it's my kill. You can help distract it._"

Faith and Glorfindel's argument hadn't gone unnoticed by the demon. It had turned its head in their direction, and sniffed the air. Luckily, they were downwind from it, so it didn't catch their scent. Unfortunately there was enough of a breeze to bring its scent to them. Faith had forgotten how badly these things stank.

The demon was moving toward them now, with a malevolent glow in its eyes. It didn't need to smell them to know they were there. It had heard them, and that was enough. Faith and Glorfindel both knew that it was useless to try to stay hidden, so they rose from behind the bushes that were concealing them, and moved out into the open. They both drew their swords and separated, a bit. Far enough apart that the demon couldn't attack them both at once, but close enough to support each other.

The demon didn't hesitate. It rose up and charged toward them. Its mouth opened wide and it roared, showing rows of razor sharp teeth, and slime dripped from its lower jaw.

It charged straight at Glorfindel, seeming to consider him either the greatest threat, or the better meal, Faith didn't know, or care, which. Glorfindel held his ground until the last instant before he danced aside, while slashing at the demon with his sword. He struck its shoulder with a glancing blow, drawing blood, but not enough to seriously wound the beast. It turned its head to follow him, trying to get its jaws into striking distance, but Glorfindel moved too quickly.

The demon's turn opened up its flank to Faith, and she struck, sinking the tip of her blade between the creature's ribs. The creature screamed, and continued its turn, nearly pulling Faith's sword from her hand as it spun completely around. It roared again, spraying Faith with its slimy saliva. Faith tried to slice her sword up through its throat, but the demon pulled back too quickly, and she only nicked its chin.

Glorfindel hadn't been holding back. He attacked the demon from behind, striking at the backs of the demon's legs in order to hamstring it. The demon stumbled forward, just as Faith brought her sword back down. She drove her blade between its jaws, up through its palate, and into its brain.

Faith felt an intense deja-vu as the vortex began to form. She felt the electricity jolt through her body. "_Stay back!_" she yelled at Glorfindel, who had started toward her. The portal swelled, and enveloped her.

* * *

This time she was ready for it, and she managed to land on her feet on a slush covered hard surface. She inhaled, and smelt something foul burning, garbage, and automobile exhaust. She could hear the noise of traffic. She looked around and saw that she was in a dark alley, dimly lit by a yellow sodium lamp at the far end of it. It was a familiar location; one she had last seen six months ago. It seemed strange that there was still slush and snow on the ground. She looked closer, and saw the trail of the demon, and a single line of bootprints following it. _Her_ bootprints, still fresh in the snow. She had returned to the same night that she had left this place.

The Unpronounceable Demon was a charred, smoking husk: the source of most of the foul stench in the air. It smelled worse than burning Orc. Faith looked at her sword, covered by its blood and slime. She used some snow, and crumpled up newspaper from a pile of garbage to clean the blade, and dried it by wiping it on her pant leg before returning it to its scabbard.

Faith saw that sky was starting to brighten with the approaching sunrise when she got clear of the alley, so she knew that some hours had passed while she'd been away. She found her motorcycle right where she'd left it. No one had touched it. Her sword slid into the holster mounted beside the seat. She picked up her helmet and gloves off the seat, and put them on. Normally she preferred not to wear the helmet, but in it protected her from the cold wind of the autumn weather. It was nearly time to put the bike away for the winter. Either that, or transfer to someplace warmer; she thought that Vegas might be nice, this time of year. She got on her bike, put her key into the ignition, and turned it. The engine roared to life.

Faith pushed the bike forward off its stand, and goosed the throttle, spinning the bike around to face the other way. She gave it a bit more gas, and the bike leapt forward. Faith steered it toward the local Council office.

Robin was _not_ going to believe _this_ after-action report.


End file.
